Scene from the play, Rough Crossings, at the Liverpool Playhouse _320
While he may have had the odd disagreement with Phillips, “I think we would both say it was a good collaboration”.
Besides, says Schama, “I wasn’t going to be a Professor in the stalls saying what was right.”
Historical research seems to be a time-consuming process, “but you just make time,” says Schama. He owns up to finding the internet a useful tool these days.
“Any historian who says the internet does not help is lying. For example, I discovered this Canadian black loyalist website which was terrific and put me in touch with black historical institutions in Canada.”
But he did have to visit places, including Nova Scotia, which in the television drama documentary and play is shown as a terrifyingly inhospitable place. “In fact, it is incredibly beautiful and, while it does have severe weather in the winter, it is washed by the Gulf Stream, so it’s not the Arctic Circle.
“The problem for the blacks who went there is that they were given their freedom, but not their land. It boiled down to the fact that they never had enough money to afford oxen, which could have got rid of the tree stumps. It sounds like a finicky thing, but it meant they could not work the land. They became fishermen and servants which was not the idea at all.”
While Liverpool does not feature in the story, Schama was keen that it should be seen in a city noted for its slave trade “although it was a divided city rather than just a pro-slavery city.”
He is just happy that his book, TV film and now play has brought this “otherwise pretty obscure story to a wider public, so that the relationship between slaves and abolitionists and Britain and America has become part of our shared history”.
Meanwhile, after 27 years in the US, Schama retains his British citizenship. “I cling on to my red passport,” he says, “although I get occasional gentle stick from the immigration people about it.
“As I get older, I must say my heart does beat more intensely for Great Albion.”
* ROUGH Crossings opens at the Liverpool Playhouse on Tuesday, and runs until October 27.
