Empire Museum

Scotland needs a coherent way of telling history on a meaningful and engaging platform through curiosity, education and a reflection on our past. This space presents the realities of Scotlands role in empire, colonialism, slavery and migration.

On the 10th June 1839 the ‘father of American Minstrels’ Thomas ‘Daddy’ Rice – made his first appearance on the stage of the Adelphi Theatre in Broughton Street, Edinburgh.

Walking trail of Glasgow's built heritage, tobacco, the slave trade and abolition.

Explores the story of the British Honduras Forestry Unit who were seconded to Scotland during WWII. The history of these 'tree-fellers' begins with the rise of mahogany as a luxury commodity and the subsequent colonisation of Belize. The legacy of the 900 Belizean lumberjacks continues in contemporary Scotland.

Explores Scottish merchant Richard Oswald's slave trading business in Sierra Leone, its ties to the coastal plantations of South Carolina and Georgia and the descendants of these enslaved people and the crop at the center of it all; rice.