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. There is plenty of slavery about we just do not call it that. Olusoga has benefited from and added significantly to the work of Fryer and other historians such as James Walvin. This is nothing to do with slavery or as with black lives matter, blacks being shot, and everything to do with a shakedown of the white man. But morals are very transient things. Instead the racket still goes on with endless boatloads of illegals swarming into Europe. Maybe Europeans did increase demand. White people are unique in ending slavery across the world*. His choice of subject and his choice of material make that very clear. Britain should be proud of helping to stop (African to America) slavery, like the Republican Party and unlike the Democrats. 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. This history of the black presence in . And yet anti-black race riots broke out in 1948 in Liverpool and in 1958 in Nottingham and Londons Notting Hill. A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxc5ENT8ajg, https://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-real-vikings/articles/eyewitness-to-the-vikings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestmannaeyjar, https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm, Apparently Essay Mills Must Be Made Illegal, Why Oxfam Can Go Boil Their Heads Over Vaccine Patents, The real point about climate change is how cheap the solution is, The excellent Tim Worstall- The Register, Tim Worstall is a darn good economist- Don Boudreaux, Tim Worstall, you pendant- Polly Toynbee, .more sensible than most right wing nutjob bloggersBob Piper. And they will go looking for parts of the past that aren't on the curriculum, and they evidently do. The strongest argument I can see for reparations is not that white people bear some kind of ancestral blame. Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates. David then moved with his mother and three siblings in the north-east of the UK. Have you ever read the account by Ibn Fadlan of a Viking funeral in Russia? Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has recently staged a play called the Meaning of Zong about the massacre of 132 enslaved Africans aboard the slave ship Zong in 1781 and the impact it had on Equiano. I doubt that they are now firmly united in a common cause. If you want to pay more tax, just write a cheque to HMRC and send it off. 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. Though I dont know where wed get $12 trillion in Confederate currency. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. Flyover Americans arent going to take it. Women, denied a meaningful role in politics, formed their own organisations, writing tracts, pamphlets and poems, gathering signatures for petitions and fundraising: At certain times and in certain places they were the engine room of the movement.. If their ancestors had remained in Africa would they be better off than they are now? The argument isnt whether historical slavery was right or wrong or who should accept responsibility for it. Maybe heard of Saint Balthild, seventh-century English lass sold into slavery, exported to the Continent, served in a palace and ended up marrying the Frankish King?). He is the undisputed King of the Internet Pedants and Lord of the Unnecessary Snark. He saw how enslaved people who had risen up were burnt to death, castrated or mutilated, punishments he regarded as merited. I am not so sure about that although it is another argument. The Benin Dialogue Group announced it had brokered an agreement that will see "some of the most iconic" of the bronzes returned to Benin City, Nigeria, where they will be housed in the soon-to-be-built Benin Royal Museum. 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. Tull played professional football for Northampton but instead of signing up for Glasgow Rangers, he enlisted. 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. Hey, we do not even have to go that far. Slavery didnt last much longer for various reasons, fizzled out in a century or so, but we have the records to show it was still part of the system after twenty years of Norman rule: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm. It wasnt always so & it may not be in the future. It isnt going to happen anyway. Mans a loon. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Certainly they killed them casually often for religious reasons. Equiano is also mentioned in Incomparable World, a novel by SI Martin, which was selected by Booker award-winning author Bernardine Evaristo for her Black Britain: Writing Back series. Particularly as nowadays anyone who dares even look at someone a few days below the age of consent is believed to be an incorrigible nonce who deserves hanging, castration, or castration by hanging. Both of these need proof. Oblong, We do not know enough to be sure. 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. many African tribes kept slaves. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion?. Away from the creative arts, the Equiano Project aims to promote race equality and he was mentioned in Parliament during a debate on Black History and Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum. "This generation has the greatest knowledge-giving tool ever created and they have access to knowledge that I just did not have when I was younger. TV historian David Olusoga claims it is "palpable nonsense" to say that removing controversial statues "somehow impoverishes history". Welsh slave-raids into England continued until early Norman times. 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 the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. After all, adult males were all but worthless and demand for women might have been enough to drive the trade anyway. And yet Africans and West Indians were banned from the victory parade in 1919. Olusoga brilliantly reveals such contradictions in British society. "Equiano is the most important voice that we have from the British experience of slavery and the slave trade," he said. Its a replay of the ecology nutters & the trannies. The Barbados slave code of 1661 stripped Africans of all human rights, and set out ways in which they were to be punished, to exert control over their labour (mutilation of the face, slitting of nostrils, castration, execution). What has Nigeria ever done for him? Then dont discuss it. Within the EU the two most common ages of consent are 14 and 15 (if Ive done my counting correctly), though in some but not all cases thats with additional restrictions on permissible age gaps. Olusoga poses as an objective historian and says he is not there to bring comfort to people. * the legal institution and pretty much the practice This seems rather unlikely. Prof Olusoga, the presenter of the A House Through Time TV series, calls it an act of "historical salvage" to bring to the fore the black British figures who had been "lost in the archives, completely forgotten". It is about the centuries-long engagement with Africa, a consequence of which is the black presence in Britain. TV historian David Olusoga claims it is "palpable nonsense" to say that removing controversial statues "somehow impoverishes history". Various among the societies that were agglomerated into Nigeria were more or less involved in that slave trade from the supply end. We are told that an estimated 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the West Indies and elsewhere in the 18th century. It began to alter (slightly) the history curriculum at university level: the first undergraduate one-year course on black British history and culture was taught at the University of Warwick in 1984. Like I said before, tolerance is in the gift of the powerful. 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). 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.. If you had spare cash or could borrow, investment in slavery was a sure winner, never mind slave rebellions or hurricanes that destroyed cane fields. One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. "The phenomena of which he is iconic is one that we have written out, edited out of our nation. Sure. During the Second World War, thousands of black American soldiers stationed in Britain were befriended by white Britons who opposed efforts by the white military to segregate them. 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. Sugar was king: originally a luxury, it became one of the main sources of calories for the British poor. That assumes an increase in demand. it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them Well the universe has a law of gravity but it doesnt have a law of should there be reparations. Its extraordinary success rested upon the foundation of sympathy laid down during the previous 70 years of abolitionist activity in Britain. Black and British: A Forgotten History addresses one of the greatest silences in British historiography. Just means they werent alone in being in the wrong. Now they do. 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. Probably few other societies had as much chance of buying freedom. So 10.416 were sold by the Africans every month for one hundred years, There will be no peace on this issue until black people acknowledge their own responsibility for the trade. One sporting event that has captured your imagination I was fortunate enough to get tickets to see some of the basketball at the London 2012 Olympics, so my brother and I went to watch the GB vs. Spain game. Nineteen eighty-four affected him in another way: the publication of Peter Fryers groundbreaking Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain introduced him to the scholarship needed to understand his position in Britain. Latin America for instance. You dont have esoteric discussions with paedophiles any more than you would with serial killers. Ill disparage them. Pretty much everybody in the West is against slavery. In the case of slavery the answer is clear. It costs money to replace them and after a famine the price of slaves would rise. Shipwrecked off the coast of Africa, he, and other survivors, were taken by an African tribe as captives. Everyone was. Grew up in Quedlinburg. It could not have happened at all unless African traders and kings had offered slaves to the Europeans. not at all to disparage your ancestors GC. David Olusoga, introduces his book Black and British, an exploration of the relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Theres an argument about judging people by the standard of their times, though even in the 1500s moral and religious objections to the slave trade had been made and the rationale of crimes against humanity is that some things are so abhorrent they could never truly be legal no matter what moral code the perpetrators justified themselves with. 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. Check out the trailer for Peter Pan & Wendy, an upcoming live-action movie directed by David Lowery. But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided. If one disproves his assertions would slavery then be okay? We do not know how great the demand for women was. 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. You should know better. There is no reason to think that slavery was nicer in Africa. Olusoga, who presents the BBC documentary series A House Through Time, told presenter Lauren Laverne that racism was "just the background hum of life" when he was growing up. The Royal African Company, established by Charles II in 1672, eventually enslaved and transported more Africans than any other company in British history. Not a big fan of the odd human sacrifice Im afraid, even though I might just be of very partial Scandinavian descent myself. Thats why we get it. It isnt happening now. Olusogas ancestors will have participated in the capture of sale of slaves in Nigeria. The Celtic version of slavery (which ran to quite a different model) was still going on in the places the Romans didnt reach. Even did something positive. Now sixteen sounds about okay to me if youre going to stick a limit somewhere, but then being British I suppose Im more likely to think the system Im accustomed to is normal and reasonable. Cest de la trs bonne dialectique conomique. As a nation, we still have only a dim understanding of the slave system that funded Sloanes collecting. But its still awful, even on a historical scale. Although I would expect the Germans, and perhaps even the Japanese, to be happy they lost the war. Thats what I dont like about the angle of Tims header. We could just cut to the chase, and impose a reparations tax on anyone who is descended from from anyone who did something, er, wrong. The point about slave descendants in Georgia being better off than descendants of slave sellers from West Africa is reasonably strong (though look back in everyones ancestry and youre likely to find, far back enough, a mix of slaves, owners and probably traders too). 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. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. Looking at what happened in Haiti or Jamaica or chunks of Latin America, I dont find either well, could have been much worse or what do you expect, Early Modern West Europeans, how could they have known better? to be particularly convincing responses. Or anything to do with slavery. Some were sold to other African tribes and the rest kept as slaves. You may concede a point here, a point there. His exposure to Nigerian culture seems quite limited. If you are wracked with guilt, ashamed of your forebears, do it! Like I said, as a mental exercise, if I do my best good faith effort to imagine an argument for reparations, I reckon it would concern harms committed by the state (which unlike the slave traders and owners, is still about today) and an argument that it breached some alleged fundamental/universal doctrine of law so that even the states efforts to put the slave industry on a legal footing were null and void. Sure. Black history: Should it be part of the wider curriculum? "I don't know why this generation has a different relationship with the past, goes to the past, expecting and looking for different things to earlier generations, but that's really is my observation about them," he says adding the internet has played a huge part. 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