Caribbean nations set to demand royal family makes reparations for slave trade
Caribbean nations set to demand royal family makes reparations for slave trade
Lloyd’s of London and Church of England also to be approached over role in past exploitation
Lloyd’s of London and Church of England also to be approached over role in past exploitation
You're viewing a single thread.
I wonder what they're expecting? The British Empire was the first major world power to abolish slavery, decades or, sometimes, centuries before the others. They imposed a death penalty on slave traders, and the Carribbean island of Tortola (now in the Virgin Islands) was home to Kingstown, the first colony of freed slaves. The biggest opponent to the abolition of the slave trade was the royalty of Lagos, the ones who were actually farming the slaves and selling them; it took the British Royal Navy to put an end to them once and for all. The debts incurred by the British Empire from buying the slave's freedom - and the Royal Navy policing the Atlantic and Carribbean seas looking for slave ships - were only paid off late in the 20th century.
If they were serious, they'd be commemorating what the British Empire did to end a millenia-old tradition of people as property. Maybe they could do it in the crumbling ruins of St. Phillip's Church?
They're demanding reparations from the royal family, not the british empire. Apparently, they can trace financial benefits from the 1700s to King Charles III.
Your proposed defense is basically that the practice of theft has been discontinued and that others were also thieves at that time.
This is just ridicolous. The british royal family was massively involved in the slave trade.
Also claiming the british empire was the first "major world power to abolish slavery" is rich, given that the empire became a world power because of slavery and genocidal colonization. Also it nicely ignores, that the british were still well involved in slave trade outside the mainland. A slave trade that was also genocidal, as hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans died even before reaching America.
But British people skewing and denieing their history of slavery, genocide, robbery and brutal opression is typical. I hope the fallout of Brexit finally gets them off their high horse and onto the ground of reality.
The British started half-heartedly "fighting the slave trade" as a calculated political/economic move after losing their biggest slave colony, the USA. For 200 years slavery built their empire, then they decided that depriving their rivals of more slaves was more beneficial. Literally nothing about this was "moral". They still maintained hundreds of thousands of slaves in their own colonies, such as in the Caribbean. "Fighting the slave trade" actually just meant not letting their competitors, the Spanish, Americans, and French, import more of them.
The slaves the British lost in the USA were replaced with workers in India who for all practical intents and purposes were practically enslaved. Without Indian workers to replace their lost American slaves, Britain never would have "abolished" the slave trade.
The biggest opponent to the abolition of the slave trade was the royalty of Lagos,
My man never heard about the USA? They had a civil war about it, made the news at the time. ( Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and international...)