You know, entirely ignoring lifetime effects? He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, details how he was sold into slavery aged 11, his experience of travelling the world as slave to a Royal Navy officer - who renamed him Gustavus Vassa - and how he bought his freedom from his final master, an English merchant in Montserrat. The Celtic version of slavery (which ran to quite a different model) was still going on in the places the Romans didnt reach. It could have ended earlier, but the planter interests in parliament defeated William Wilberforces attempts. Its an interesting exercise to consider, given we live within such a system, how or whether that contradiction can be settled. All in all your typical West African is far more likely to have ancestral connections to the slave trade than your typical Brit. The Russians do not have these problems because they are not ashamed. Like the Nigerian slavers who enslaved and sold the slaves, you mean? In the late 1800's and early 1900's, 30,000 Jewish migrants from Russia and Eastern Europe settled in Manchester. I could just as well feel something else entirely, and Im sceptical of all approaches to impose a supposedly universal, timeless or even just coherent, thats a challenge in itself ethical system. But you need a different approach if you dont think great-grandkids of the Confederacy are still fair game.) Fired by religious feeling, they embarked on a campaign of public education and political lobbying unprecedented in scale and revolutionary in nature. The strongest case I can see against reparations is not fundamentally a legal one but perhaps one degree abstracted the law if we can litigate that, we can litigate a heck of a lot of stuff from centuries past, tie our legal systems up in knots with no obvious limits in sight. One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. Re putting the argument for paedophilia they actually gave Gide the Nobel prize for literature didnt they? This is indeed tu quoque. Olusoga patterns his narrative after Fryers, starting with the North African presence in Roman Britain. Would, say, Huguenot-descended South Africans suing France over the 1572 St. Bartholomews Day massacre, or Cornish people suing HMG for the suppression of the 1497 Rebellion, deserve compensation? Get back to us when your sin/privilege is expunged. But there have been other societies with slavery where slaves had more autonomy and a greater chance of buying their freedom. It doesnt end with the parties saying Well that was pleasantly intellectually stimulating, now lets have a nice game of cricket Youre opponents are not playing by the same rules as you are. Nobody will stop you, honest. His black half can get the half-payment direct from his white half. It is a good deed that must not go unpunished. The historian tells Michael Segalov about getting up early, reading George Orwell, taking his dog George for a walk, playing his guitar You can be redeemed, you worthless pasty people. He saw how enslaved people who had risen up were burnt to death, castrated or mutilated, punishments he regarded as merited. Moreover its arguably unjust that only victims of still-extant states have a route to compensation whereas people from ethnic groups roughly contemporaneously massacred, enslaved and sacrificed by the Aztec Empire have nobody to sue. And I dont think this is what reparations campaigners are calling for either, as I understand it their argument includes systematic legacy issues not just the period of slavery itself, so the harm relates more directly to them not just their ancestors. While I dont think they persuaded anyone, they did shift perspectives a bit. But any planter who deliberately starved his slaves to death would quickly go bust. I can then give him the details of other descendants, he can apologise to and compensate. Would probably have taken your suggestion as a challenge. (Im just presenting the case here in reality there are obviously some big questions about the logic of Nuremberg etc, just as there are questions about how judges in Common Law occasionally summon up things as if they had always and forever been a part of the Law, albeit previously unrecorded, rather than something the judge just made up.). Britain was happy to force the Bevan Boys down coal mines. By David Dabydeen (Photo By Alamy) Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. In 1986 I came across the book Staying Power by the British journalist Peter Fryer. In the system that made Sloane wealthy, black women sought out herbs, plant species that he carefully identified and categorised, and used them to induce abortions, determined as many were not to bring into the world children who would be born items of property and destined to live short, brutalised lives. Oh man. It was far too real to her. If you want to pay more tax, just write a cheque to HMRC and send it off. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards. They are pretty much airbrushed from history, whereas the transatlantic slave trade seems to be wall-to-wall on our TV screens and in our school textbooks. I assume these were usually killed before Europeans turned up and bought them. Indeed, third-century York may have been more ethnically and racially diverse than present-day York. Not a big fan of the odd human sacrifice Im afraid, even though I might just be of very partial Scandinavian descent myself. And Britain worked for the whole of the 19th century to put down slavery in Africa. Whether they are too stupid to think of that remains to be seen. Although the bottom line is that no Black person remembers slavery. Definitely didnt die out with the Romans. What do you think their stongest argument is? My argument is that Africans were probably happily killing each other for women before the West turned up. He previously worked at JP Morgan for 18 years in a number of senior roles and was . Supported by African authors of slave narratives such as Olaudah Equiano and Ottabah Cugoano, they held meetings all over the country, attracting huge crowds. Very little sugar on the mainland. Africans had a demand for female slaves. Id say the same to the Black Lives Matter people. There is no reason to think one system was more or less brutal than the other. No other race / culture was willing and able to do that. When the American Civil War interrupted the supply of cotton, hundreds of thousands of British workers were made destitute, dependent on soup kitchens, and the British economy was dealt a thunderous blow, all because an ocean away the forced labour of four million enslaved black Americans had been disrupted. As would Beyonce. They did not care much for adult males. I have a peeve about the BBC genealogical show Who do you think you are? which I dont know whether has been inflected upon the Left Pond. And so, equipped with the fruits of Islamic learning (new navigational instruments, books on astronomy and trigonometry), European explorers set sail for Africa to relieve the natives of their gold. So my advice would be, for his own health, STFU. By a Senegalese author: The veiled genocide = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxc5ENT8ajg, MyBurningEars August 30, 2020 at 11:52 am Slavery within West African societies being different again I dont think the places with very high rates of local slavery were anything like the sugar plantations. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The German survivors of Stalingrad were sent to camps and most of them worked to death. It is a political campaign, not a contribution to academic history. You lost those two. TV presenter David Olusoga has told the Edinburgh TV Festival his career had sometimes left him feeling "crushed, isolated," and "disempowered". In dealing with the black contribution to the First World War, for example, he cites popular gratitude and admiration for black Britons among them Walter Tull, who fought on the Western Front. Read about our approach to external linking. BurningEars August 30, 2020 at 3:07 pm Theres a flaw in arguments of the form frankly you should be glad I murdered your sister. H istorian and broadcaster David Olusoga has been the face of a decolonial turn in British broadcasting that, in recent years, with series including the Bafta-winning Britain's Forgotten Slave. "He was the voice of somebody who wasn't speaking about the past as a historian, but was living it. Anybody can do this. Those who grew rich on slavery and the slave trade were not neutral and no achievement or act of philanthropy justifies airbrushing their involvement from history. Sure. As it happens, I dont believe in sins of the fathers passing down the generations. If one disproves his assertions would slavery then be okay? Should black history be taught all year round? Watching @worstall execute @richardjmurphy is like watching a very, very clever cat slowly killing at ataxic mouse. Separated from home and family and landed in the West Indies (countless numbers dying of suffocation during the journey, given that the people traffickers were packing the holds to maximise profits), the Africans had no recourse to the law, much less the conscience of their captors. So how much have considered paedophilia? Should black history be taught all year round? Not good. "The phenomena of which he is iconic is one that we have written out, edited out of our nation. Nevertheless, we live in a society that generally regards slavery as an absolute and eternal wrong, and a grave one at that, yet which has historically (at least certain people and places, and including the state itself) benefited from imposing slavery on others. Not to say it was nice.. So this race baiter can try his guilt trip on someone else. It built slave forts on the African coast, some such as Bunce Island in Sierra Leone furnished with a rape house. I think a case could be made. My great, great, grandfather was one. Thats why when the question is raised, I always point out that they owe me lots and lots of money. Prof Olusoga says statues, such as those of slave traders . Prof Darity and Ms Mullen outline that to eliminate the existing Black-White wealth gap an allocation of between $10 trillion and $12 trillion, or about $800,000 per black household, should be paid. In America few were castrated, which is why there are now >40 million descendants there. Not many remember anything about segregation either. For some peculiar reason possibly because theres a section of Western society has become very insecure about its own position its being some credence. And the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. But it is Olusoga who keeps insisting that its the Brits who are uniquely responsible.. Olusoga was born in Lagos to a White mother and a Nigerian father who, I hate to say nautrally, did a runner. In the 15th and 16th centuries, thousands of pounds of gold were shipped to Europe. People seem pretty much agreed on what is right and what is wrong. Should almost go without saying except of course that it doesnt, since clearly not every culture has the same moral gut reaction to it that I do. Would, say, Huguenot-descended South Africans suing France over the 1572 St. Bartholomews Day massacre, or Cornish people suing HMG for the suppression of the 1497 Rebellion, deserve compensation?. Olusoga brilliantly reveals such contradictions in British society. Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. To me personally, this is the thing. I had a girlfriend whose mother was a Nazi. Thankfully the Woke have gifted us an all purpos3e response to this sort of crap. We pretend we do not like slavery but actually we do not like slave traders. "This is a richer history as well as a necessary history; this is a more vivid history as well as a history that tells the back stories of more people in this country than the traditional narratives we've had.". Thats what I dont like about the angle of Tims header. The book accompanying. Check out the trailer for Peter Pan & Wendy, an upcoming live-action movie directed by David Lowery. That may have caused more violence. Thats why we get it. Shouldnt Olusoga be writing in Ubangi bantu-language? Both of these need proof. Less flippantly, Western countries are not of one mind when it comes to the age of consent sex with a 14 year-old is legal in some countries, criminal in others (yes yes, paedophilia versus ephebophilia etc, you got me).. Anglo-Saxons had slaves. You dont have esoteric discussions with paedophiles any more than you would with serial killers. I hadnt gotten far when she stopped me cold, pointing out that her best friend, a 15 year old girl knitting beside a window in her house, was machine gunned by an American P-51 pilot. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion?. That was at the least unusual, particularly from a West European perspective bearing in mind the practice of slavery had pretty much fizzled out there. I have that estimate saved and ready to be critiqued as part of a larger project. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. June 16, 2020 - 20:29 BST Aisha Nozari. Abolition was the first mass philanthropic movement in Britain, and it ended the slave trade in 1807. He writes to inflame white guilt, so that you will ACCEPT destruction of your culture. It isnt happening now. They may have been turning people they would have killed into a profitable commodity. You should know better. 2023 BBC. Hes welcome to pursue his line of thought but he should bear in mind that tolerance is, by its nature, in the gift of the powerful. The strongest argument I can see for reparations is not that white people bear some kind of ancestral blame. 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. "So when black history was missing - the history of empire, the history of slavery - was missing from my history lessons, I didn't have a place to go to discover those missing chapters. I havent the faintest idea whether slavery in the Roman controlled areas of Britain was more along the continental Roman model or retained Celtic characteristics. Both groups today, especially the former, could reasonably claim historic persecution has reduced their present income and wealth. As a nation, we still have only a dim understanding of the slave system that funded Sloanes collecting. To be honest, I was a bit sceptical about the Olympics coming to London, but the atmosphere across the capital was genuinely wonderful . That assumes an increase in demand. Theres a flaw in arguments of the form frankly you should be glad I murdered your sister, since had I not done so, its quite possible though we cannot be sure that someone else would have tortured her then murdered her, which is even worse, so whos the real criminal? Which is that I still murdered your sister. Rather the constitution banned the slave trade and so it become economically worth it to make sure slaves lived longer. The stars are out as Dr Pete Olusoga explores the psychology of stage and screen with the wonderful British actor (and Coronation Street veteran), Shobna Gulati. I dont think the traders can be given a pass on this front either., Just means they werent alone in being in the wrong.. "The way history is viewed is changing. Hey, we do not even have to go that far. Back in the heyday of blogging, perhaps ten years ago or so, there was a blogger calling him/herself The Heresiarch who enjoyed running against received opinions. And they will go looking for parts of the past that aren't on the curriculum, and they evidently do. Over 1000 years in Britain. Then a young teenager, he was driven out of his council home, together with his grandmother, mother, two sisters and younger brother, by a sustained campaign of nightly stoning of their windows. They did not pay for them and were going to kill a lot of them anyway. Pretty sure if you could, implausibly, trace my family tree through various not-very-literate eras youd pass through at least one Anglo-Saxon who owned a bunch of Britons. In 1796, a bill was defeated by only four votes: a group of abolitionist MPs went to the opera and missed the vote. Those who grew rich on slavery and the slave trade were not neutral and no achievement or act of philanthropy justifies airbrushing their involvement from history.. Needless to say, the national mood changed. Olusoga is making an appeal to white guilt. arguments are pretty weak since relying on a doctrine of virtues of the fathers risks implicitly accepting sins of the fathers.. Of course if a rule was instituted that only people with white skins had to pay taxes, it might happen. I agree BIS. There are probably a thousand organisations, charities and assorted grifters who would happily cash your cheque. By this logic, we ought to sue the African American community. When I met her, ~1995, I started asking her questions about the war, as I thought she was a fabulous resource of information. at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too. First launched in London in 1987, it aims to highlight and celebrate what black people have achieved in Britain throughout history. Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. At the moment it seems to regarded as a good thing. They deliberately bought skewed mostly male gender balance. It wasnt always so & it may not be in the future. The rest apart from Ireland (17, partly due to influence of aforementioned Patrick) set it younger. Under English law, damages are assessed as being that amount needed to restore them to the position they would have been, had the event claimed against not occurred. And the Domesday Book even counts slaves as a separate category below the unfree peasants (villans, bordars and cottars) those owed service to a Lord who could order them to move about and could say yes or no to their proposed marriages, but unlike slaves he didnt own them, couldnt sell them, and they had property rights to at least a smallholding. The Coldest Case in Laramie: yet another bleak true crime podcast, From Sophie Mackintosh to Stephen Moss: new books reviewed in short, Universal Credit falls short of covering the bare essentials. We are told that an estimated 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the West Indies and elsewhere in the 18th century. Oblong, I learned the hard way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr_Gide, Less flippantly, Western countries are not of one mind when it comes to the age of consent sex with a 14 year-old is legal in some countries, criminal in others (yes yes, paedophilia versus ephebophilia etc, you got me). It isnt going to happen anyway. How does importing new labour from West Africa solve the food shortage in the West Indies? And so many hundreds of thousands of British workers were directly dependent on slavery (from sailors to those who built, rigged and repaired ships) that it was easy to turn a blind eye to the inhumanity. Im not even saying thats a convincing argument, it has some very serious weak points, just that I reckon its a stronger one than a general appeal about current inequality. if he wants to be an historian he should present a fair and realistic picture of what happened, Your email address will not be published. If we went down this route thered be goodness knows how much fun and games to be had with legal claims over the treatment of Irish by Cromwell, the clearing of the Highlands and so on, before you even get on to the globe-spanning imperial stuff. Once insignificant villages, great cities such as Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow sprang up on the profits of slavery. Reasonable estimates have some 50% of the inhabitants of the Sokoto Caliphate as late as the late 19th cent being slaves. If the alternative was that they were killed? Black and British: A Forgotten History addresses one of the greatest silences in British historiography. Then the adult men became profitable too. He is the undisputed King of the Internet Pedants and Lord of the Unnecessary Snark. Fryers book was monumental, inspiring conferences, publications, the setting up of local history groups, the establishment of Black History Month, and radio and television programmes. Macmillan, 624pp, 25, David Dabydeen is a novelist, broadcaster, academic and co-editor of The Oxford Companion to Black British History (Oxford University Press), This article appears in the 16 Aug 2017 issue of the New Statesman, Trump goes nuclear, Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics. not at all to disparage your ancestors GC. So is Richard Murphy. (Britain expended blood and treasure on ending the slave trade, and thereby paid its moral debt already is one way of trying to resolve it, but rather unsatisfactory at righting the wrongs done to those who had already fallen victim to the trade.) Defeated William Wilberforces attempts have these problems because they are too stupid to think system... 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