They were once feted as pioneers, leaders who created empires and powerful nations, worthy characters of worship by their successors. Some of their statues stood on their pedestals for centuries in city squares and other central locations, seen by millions of passers-by and pointed to reverentially by parents and teachers of successive generations of schoolchildren.
Now, however, the statues are being toppled. And this is not just the fate of a relatively unknown individual such as Edward Colston, a 17th-century wealthy trader whose statue stood for 125 years in the heart of the English city of Bristol, only to be ripped out now by demonstrators objecting to his role in the slave trade.
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