Cast in Stone

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• Treich-Laplène, Marcel
  French explorer and colonial administrator in Côte d'Ivoire in the nineteenth century.
• Trenchard, Hugh, 1st Viscount Trenchard
  British military officer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and a key figure in the foundation of the UK's Royal Air Force (RAF). Trenchard served in several colonial and military capacities, including Commandant of the Southern Nigeria Regiment (1904–1905; 1907-1910), Chief of the Air Staff (1918; 1919-1930). During the interwar years, he had oversight of Britain's colonial bombing operations in countries such as Somalia, Iraq and India.
• Trevithick, Richard
  British inventor and mining engineer in Cornwall and South America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1808, having moved to London, Trevithick entered into a three year partnership with West India merchant Robert Dickinson, who has a possible match in the Legacies of British Slavery database for a "Robert Dickinson or Dickenson". Dickinson provided financial backing for several of Trevithick's ship-related patents. According to Francis Trevithick’s biography of his father, Richard Trevithick supplied steam engines to a number of British slave-owners in the Caribbean for use on their plantations in the 1810s. Some of the slavery-linked individuals Trevithick corresponded with in this period included Sir Christopher Hawkins (1758 – 1829), Sir Rose Price 1st Bart (1768-1834), R. W. Pickwood (1776-1834) and the Pinney family. In 1816, Trevithick moved to work on mining projects in South America, where he lived for the next eleven years of his life until 1827.
• Truffot, Emile Louis
  French sculptor in the nineteenth century.
• Turin, Pierre
  French sculptor active in the twentieth century.
• Turner, Alfred
  British sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some of his notable colonial works include the Delville Wood South African National Memorial, a bronze statue of Queen Victoria for Delhi, and a memorial to King Edward VII at Lyallpur.
• Tweed, John
  British sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tweed was a prolific sculptor of colonial statues and was popularly known as "The Empire Sculptor" during his lifetime. Some of his notable colonial works include the statue of Robert Clive in Westminster and two statues of Cecil Rhodes installed in Bulawayo and Salisbury (Harare), both of which have since been removed.
• Unidentified black model
• Valée, Sylvain-Charles
  French general of the First Empire and Governor General of Algeria (1837-1840)
• Van Den Boom-Cairns, Carol
  Irish-born Dutch sculptor, studied art in Dublin.
• van der Meulen, Laurens
  Flemish sculptor who worked in England in the seventeenth century.
• van Dievoet, Peter
  Flemish sculptor who worked in England in the seventeenth century.
• Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Charles, 6th Marquess of Londonderry
  British politician in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Londonderry was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1886 to 1889.
• Vane, Charles, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry
  British soldier, politician and nobleman. He was Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies between 1807 and 1809 alongside Edward Cooke (1755–1820). His paternal grandfather, Alexander Stewart (1699–1781), was an Irish landowner who had inherited a fortune from his brother-in-law Robert Cowan (?-1737), who had been Governor of Bombay from 1729 to 1734.
• Vannier, Paul
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Vassall-Fox, Henry, 3rd Baron Holland
  English politician and slave-owner of estates in Jamaica through his wife Elizabeth Webster (née Vassall). His uncle, Charles James Fox (1749-1806), was Foreign Secretary in 1782, 1783 and 1806.
• Vaury, Maurice
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Vélo
  Born December 7, 1931, died June 5, 1984 in Pointe-à-Pitre. His father, an accordion player, was named VEnance LOllia, and he contracted the first and last names for his artist name: Vélo. Marcel Lollia is a master tambouyé, or ka player from Guadeloupe. With the group he formed, called “La Briscante”, Vélo set off to perform in Paris, Puerto Rico and Martinique. Returning to Guadeloupe in 1970, he joined “Takouta”, one of the first gwo-ka groups, and recorded his first LP with Marcel Mavounzy, who had already made the first gwo-ka recording during a Vélo performance in 1963. Other albums followed. In 1978, Vélo took part in the déboulés, impromptu processions at carnival time in the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre. The members of the marching group wore recycled clothes, prompting the question: “Mé A Ki Yo”, “who are these people? This gave the group its name, Akiyo.Vélo left the group a few months later. Marginal and without a real home, recognized as an artist but with little help from other artists who feared his disrespect for convention, Vélo fell ill, ceased all activity in May and died in hospital on June 5, 1984.
• Verdier, Arthur
  French mariner and colonialist in the nineteenth century. Verdier lived in Côte d'Ivoire from the 1860s to the 1890s and was a colonial planter, diplomat and negotiator in the region.
• Verlet, Raoul
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Verne, Jules
  French novelist, poet, and playwright. Verne’s writings have been celebrated across the world, but his complex relationship to nineteenth-century imperialism has been less well-documented. Verne was born in the city of Nantes in 1828. Nantes had been France’s largest slave-trading port, with over 1,700 recorded voyages departing from the city between 1657 and 1841 according to the SlaveVoyages database, and Verne’s family on both sides had close connections to the slave trade. William Butcher (2006) has identified Verne’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side as a slave-trader, and his father Pierre Verne (1799-1871) had Nantes slave-traders among his clients. Verne’s great-uncle, Alexandre Verne (1782-1836), had also married into the Bernier slave-trading family. Many of Verne’s novels deal explicitly with race, slavery and colonialism. Un capitaine de quinze ans (1878) and Nord Contre Sud (1887) examine slavery in Africa and the United States respectively. More popular works by Verne feature a number colonial characters, such as the Indian princess Aouda and colonial officer Sir Francis Cromarty in Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1872), as well as many colonial settings, exemplified by Verne’s first novel Cinq semaines en ballon (1863) which is based upon a imaginary expedition to Africa. Achille Mbembe (2013) situates Verne’s novels within the late-nineteenth century “colonial education of the French”, in which ideas of racial difference became heavily normalised throughout mass culture in the metropole.
• Vernon, Robert
  British Whig and then Liberal politician in the nineteenth century. Vernon was briefly Secretary at War (1852) and President of the Board of Control (1855-1858).
• Victoria
  Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901 and Empress of India from 1876 to 1901.
• Vildeman, Richard
  Réunion sculptor active in the twenty-first century.
• Vincent, Edgar, 1st Viscount D'Abernon
  Member of Parliament for Exeter (1899-1906).
• Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet dit Voltaire)
  French writer emblematic of the 18th century and of the figure of the committed writer. Presented as the embodiment of the Enlightenment movement, his image and his work have been mobilized for contradictory causes. He is regularly accused of publicly condemning slavery and racism while personally profiting from them. This accusation was made in the 19th century, relying on a letter which was proved to be a forgery.
• Wade, George Edward
  British sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some of his notable colonial works include the statue of King Edward VII in Chennai, the statue of William Mansfield, 1st Baron Sandhurst in Mumbai, and three bronze statues of John MacDonald in Montreal, Hamilton and Kingston in Canada, which were either toppled or removed in the early 2020s.
• Waghorn, Thomas Fletcher
  British postal pioneer and sailor with the Royal Navy and East India Company. Waghorn promoted a new route from Britain to India via the Suez Canal.
• Walker, Arthur George
  English sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Walters, Ian Homer
  British sculptor
• Warren, Allan
  English portrait photographer and actor.
• Washington, George
  American slave-owner, Founding Father, military officer, and politician who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.
• Waterlow, Sydney, 1st Baronet
  English politician and philanthropist in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Watson, Musgrave Lewthwaite
  English sculptor in the nineteenth century.
• Watt, James
  British inventor, engineer, and mercantile agent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Watt came from a family with close ties to transatlantic commerce and occasionally slave-trading. His father, James Watt senior (1698-1782) was a transatlantic merchant in Greenock who traded in sugar and tobacco with North America and the Caribbean, while his brother John "Jockey" Watt (1739-1762) became involved in slave-trading. In 1762, Watt became involved in slave-trafficking when he took responsibility for an enslaved boy named Frederick from his brother Jockey. Watt possibly became involved in delivering the child to the Glasgow merchant John Warrand, but it seems Frederick was able to run away and escape the affair. Watt also supplied steam engines to the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century, which were used on enslaved labour plantations. According to Jennifer Tann, the Boulton & Watt firm exported a total of 129 engines to the Caribbean between 1803 and 1833. For more information on the relationship between James Watt and slavery, please refer to the research carried out by the historian Stephen Mullen.
• Watts, George Frederic
  British sculptor and painter in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of his notable colonial works include the statue of Henry Vassall-Fox in London and four Physical Energy equestrian statues in London, Surrey, Cape Town, and Harare. Watts' first full-size bronze cast of Physical Energy in Cape Town was installed as a memorial to Cecil Rhodes, whom Watts described as ‘the last of great Englishmen of his type'.
• Wearing, Gillian
  English artist
• Wedgwood, Josiah
  English potter and founder of the Wedgwood company in the eighteenth century. In 1787, Wedgwood produced an anti-slavery medallion depicting a kneeling enslaved Black man alongside the words "Am I not a man and a brother?", and the medallion has since become one of the most famous - and often critiqued - symbols of the British abolitionist movement.
• Weekes, Henry
  English sculptor in the nineteenth century. Some of his notable colonial works include the statue of George Eden in Auckland (previously Kolkata), the statue of James Lushington in St George's Cathedral, Madras, and the statue of Richard Wellesley on the Gurkha Staircase in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in London.
• Wellesley, Arthur, 1st Duke of Wellington
  British statesman, soldier, and Tory politician in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wellesley's extensive political and military career crossed both Asia and Europe. In India, Wellesley was governor of Seringapatam and Mysore between 1799 and 1805. His brother, Richard Wellesley (1760-1842), was Governor-General of India during the same period. In Britain, Wellesley held a number of political offices, including Chief Secretary for Ireland (1807-1809), Foreign Secretary (1834-1835), and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1828-1830; 1834). Wellesley was also twice Commander-in-Chief of the British Army (1827-1828; 1842-1852). Wellesley was also a prominent opponent of the abolitionist movement in Britain, with the historian Michael Taylor describing him as 'the most ardently pro-slavery politician of the nineteenth century'.
• Wesley, Charles
  English Methodist and hymn writer. Wesley briefly lived in British North America between 1735 and 1736.
• West, Benjamin
  British-American painter, known for his large dramatic oil paintings depicting key moment in British and American history.
• Westmacott, Richard
  British sculptor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His wife, Dorothy Wilkinson (1778-1834), was born in Jamaica and was the daughter of Dr. William Wilkinson. A 'William Wilkinson' is listed as overseer of the Sandy Gutt estate in Jamaica in the 1780s and two men, 'William Wilkinson' and 'William Robert Wilkinson', are listed as plantation owners in the Jamaica Almanacs in the 1820s, but the exact William has not yet been reliably identified. Westmacott produced a number of works with links to slavery and empire during his lifetime. Aleema Gray and Danielle Thom have argued 'his sculptural practice was undoubtedly entwined with the proceeds and promotion of colonial exploitation, both in terms of his social status and his list of clients'. Examples of these types of clients include Westmacott's church memorials for individuals such as Edward Long (St Mary's Church, Slindon), Richard Pennant (St Tegai’s Church, Llandygai), and Elizabeth Pinder (St John's Parish Church, Barbados), all of whom were connected to slave-ownership in the Caribbean. The statue of Robert Milligan, removed from London's West India Docks in 2020, is perhaps Westmacott's most visible statue associated with chattel slavery, but other statues include the Nelson monument in Liverpool and the Charles James Fox memorial grouping in Westminster Abbey, which depicts a kneeling enslaved African. Westmacott also produced sculptures for India, including the statues of Warren Hastings and William Cavendish Bentinck in Kolkata.
• White, George
  British Army officer and Commander-in-Chief in India from 1893 to 1898. White fought in a number of nineteenth-century colonial conflicts in Asia and Africa.
• Whitehead, Joseph
  English sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Whiting, Onslow
  British sculptor active in the twentieth century. His notable colonial works include three bronze reliefs for the Prince Christian Victor Memorial in Plymouth and a bronze bust of Cecil Rhodes on the wall of No. 6 King Edward Street, owned by Oriel College. Both works were commissioned by Alfred Mosely (1855-1917), a wealthy British colonial diamond mine owner in South Africa who was a friend of Rhodes.
• Wilberforce, William
  British politician, philanthropist, and leading abolitionist in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
• William III
  King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1689-1702. In 1689, William III accepted shares worth £1,000 in the Royal African Company from its deputy governor Edward Colston.
• William IV
  King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 1830 to 1837 William III was a prominent opponent of the abolition of slavery, an ally of the West India Committee, and the only member of the Royal Family to step foot in North America and the Caribbean during his service in the Royal Navy. William's time in the Caribbean led to rumours of illicit relationships with African women, which were satirised in racialised and voyeuristic prints like James Gillray’s 'Wouski' (1788) in metropolitan Britain. William's vocal support for chattel slavery is best exemplified by his speech in the House of Lords in July 1799, in which he spoke in defence of 'the rights of the Liverpool Merchant and West India Planter' against 'the spirit of perversion and falsehood'.
• Williamson, Francis John
  British sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.