Rather that certain western states, still in existence therefore potentially still liable, regulated and indeed encouraged the development of both the transatlantic slave trade and the slave-labour economic systems of the colonies, at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too. Good point, I wonder how he squares the obviously comfortable living he has writing, opining and broadcasting about slavery with his principles. My great, great, grandfather was one. TV historian David Olusoga claims it is "palpable nonsense" to say that removing controversial statues "somehow impoverishes history". 2023 BBC. Fair point. Cest de la trs bonne dialectique conomique. Indeed, third-century York may have been more ethnically and racially diverse than present-day York. 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. Their cities, as well as their comfort, will rapidly decay. Your email address will not be published. Later his parents separated from each other when he was just two years old. Well one economist has worked out the amount to be paid (although not on a damages basis, when one imagines blacks might end up paying whites, but on a close the wealth gap basis): A renowned economist has said that $12 trillion should be afforded to black Americans in reparation for slavery to help the close wealth gap. Oh man. Their demands should simply be refused. This is a moral argument. Peter Olusoga. Again, not that these market forces absolve the sellers of a moral responsibility, but there is an argument occasionally deployed that slaves would have been slaves anyway. Reasonable estimates have some 50% of the inhabitants of the Sokoto Caliphate as late as the late 19th cent being slaves. But that is not the argument I am making. The Westman Islands of Iceland have an interesting history in terms of European slavery a major rebellion of presumably mostly Irish (Westmen) slaves was put down there in the typically brutal Scandinavian manner, hence the name, but in the 1600s the local inhabitants were themselves enslaved by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers, from where a few were ransomed back and one wrote about the experience. Shipwrecked off the coast of Africa, he, and other survivors, were taken by an African tribe as captives. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion? Thats before you get on to the Khoisan and the Zulus, the Carthaginians and Romans, the Vikings versus pretty much anyone else who lived within raiding distance, Theres a fundamental weakness with all theories of universal law or justice, which is that across time and space, the human conception of what is right and just seems to be extremely varied and rarely (to modern Western eyes) pleasant. That is not true. I am not so sure about that although it is another argument. "He was the voice of somebody who wasn't speaking about the past as a historian, but was living it. That hes able to write this article is because hes living in what is, by historical standards, a remarkably tolerant society. If we look back history is just an unending series of atrocities. 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. and while the responsible state still exists, Theres a fundamental weakness with all theories of universal law or justice, which is that across time and space, the human conception of what is right and just seems to be extremely varied and rarely (to modern Western eyes) pleasant.. In 1787, they met in London and set up the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. No member of my family ever owned slaves. True that unlike certain other examples of slavery, you werent likely to be killed as part of a religious sacrifice or as part of your owners funeral. Purely speculatively, and as a matter of prediction rather than judging whats best, its hard to imagine large-scale reparations ever being adopted in Blighty because the ratio of losers to winners with the vote (presuming eg British Asians would be ineligible for compensation) is going to remain unfavourable and the cost of reparations across the relevant parts of the old Empire (if youre compensating British Jamaicans, presumably youre going to compensate all the Jamaicans in Jamaica once youve accepted the principle) would be considerable. If Olusoga is looking for apologies or compensation for slavery, I am quite prepared to meet him, accept his apology, togehr with cash, cheque or even a postal order. That star stuff wont last. Like Fryers book, Olusogas will inspire and will come to be seen as a major effort to address one of the greatest silences in British historiography. The publication in 1852 of Uncle Toms Cabin, by the American abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, swelled national sympathy for the plight of black slaves. In the USA? (If the likes of SMFS believe Western society will fall apart without a return to traditional Christian-inspired values, I suggest they either don a pessimists crash-helmet or just cling on and enjoy the ride to Hell in their top-gear handcart. Long after slavery ended in the British colonies, British people continued to lobby the American government to free their slaves. His current research focuses on stress, burnout, and wellbeing in sports, with a particular interest in high-performance environments and elite coaching. Various among the societies that were agglomerated into Nigeria were more or less involved in that slave trade from the supply end. Now they do. Fired by religious feeling, they embarked on a campaign of public education and political lobbying unprecedented in scale and revolutionary in nature. "They look to history not just for inspiration and comfort, not just for heroes and for glorious chapters; they look for history expecting to find challenging stories, painful stories, dark truths, villains as well as heroes. 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. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. (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.). And that still stands even if there really are a bunch of torturing murderers out there too. Even discussing it gives your opponents arguments merit. They may have been turning people they would have killed into a profitable commodity. Cotton was a completely different slave economy. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. Id say theres enormous dangers in treating this as if it was some public school debating society gig. We aint paying no goddam reparations & no-ones gonna make us. And yet Africans and West Indians were banned from the victory parade in 1919. Shouldnt matter whether some long-dead relative fought long ago for or against (not at all to disparage your ancestors GC, who all sound very sound) in terms of whether somethings your fault. Everyone was. Grew up in Quedlinburg. See, five years ago I wouldnt have written a crass comment like that, but hey, times achanging and as financially independent with some FU-money, I dont have to worry about cancellation culture, LOL. His exposure to Nigerian culture seems quite limited. I agree BIS. They have a game plan & youre falling for it. Anyway, I digress, we did have at some point, a gang of pedos turn up and put their case, reasonably, and were tolerated and conversed with. Youre right, MBE. The reason why Equiano is not a national name is because slavery is not a part of the history that we teach when it should be because I don't think you can understand the 18th century in particular but also the 19th century without reference to slavery.". Whoever has the upper-hand in power political, cultural, economic, military or whatever other form is decisive at that moment. Video1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, How 10% of Nigerian registered voters delivered victory, Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales, The Indian-American CEO who wants to be US president, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip. There is no reason to think that slavery was nicer in Africa. Anglo-Saxons had slaves. BLM is after political or financial advantages because of slavery. A House Through Time returned to BBC Two in May for its third season, and once again is fronted by historian extraordinaire David Olusoga. Theres no point pretending Europeans who profited from either the transatlantic slave trade or the use of slave labour in the Americas were somehow doing a favour to the slaves involved, even if, as it happens but their owners could not have predicted, their surviving descendants ended up financially better off on average than the counterfactual of remaining in Africa. After decades of complaints, the Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1712 and, Olusoga writes, Independent traders were turned loose upon the shores of Africa. These traders had argued (stone-blind to irony) that the right to enslave Africans was a defining feature of English freedom and that the Royal African Company had breached their status as free-born Englishmen. If black lives really mattered these people would be protesting the 500 shot dead so far by predominantly black men in Chicago this year. Id agree that attitudes in the UK are approaching that situation, but theres still a long, long way to go yet. The many African-American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, who visited Britain from the 1840s onwards, were well received and, again, thousands of people greeted them and raised money to support their cause. Check out the trailer for Peter Pan & Wendy, an upcoming live-action movie directed by David Lowery. And even if you personally disagree with it, what would be the strongest argument for some form of legal settlement? 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. In America few were castrated, which is why there are now >40 million descendants there. Both of these need proof. In 1860, cotton goods accounted for 40 per cent of all British exports. Hey, we do not even have to go that far. It wasnt always so & it may not be in the future. Then dont discuss it. Slavery is bad or it isnt. 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. "I first read it as a student and it struck me as something that was very different to other things I was reading about the Atlantic slave trade. Women such as Elizabeth Heyrick continued to lobby for the abolition of slavery. Jamaicans and Nigerians used to hate each other. I just dont really get what Olusoga is saying. The book accompanying. Get back to us when your sin/privilege is expunged. Viking Dublin was a major slave-trading centre (English, Irish, Scots, anyone else they could get their hands on). There are probably a thousand organisations, charities and assorted grifters who would happily cash your cheque. 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. Olusoga, who is half-Nigerian, traces this focus to his mother telling him when he was a child that Nigerian soldiers served in World War II. Black and British: A Forgotten History Over 1000 years in Britain. It built slave forts on the African coast, some such as Bunce Island in Sierra Leone furnished with a rape house. Two men managed to escape and were rescued, but not before my great, great, grandfather was beaten, starved and worked to death, his body thrown into the jungle for the animals and insects to dispose of. And the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. To be honest, I was a bit sceptical about the Olympics coming to London, but the atmosphere across the capital was genuinely wonderful . In the 15th and 16th centuries, thousands of pounds of gold were shipped to Europe. They organised a boycott of sugar, produced more petitions and hosted meetings. "They were barely known even to historians. "Incorporating the stories of people like Equiano is merely part of a process of looking at all of British history; not just being selective, not only going to the chapters that make us feel good about ourselves or proud.". Olusogas ancestors will have participated in the capture of sale of slaves in Nigeria. , fifth, and other survivors, were taken by an African tribe as.. 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