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. In the end, wholl be proven right about the matter practically, in terms of what the outcome is and what the first drafts of history say? Ill disparage them. So is Richard Murphy. 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. That is a strawman argument at its best. arguments are pretty weak since relying on a doctrine of virtues of the fathers risks implicitly accepting sins of the fathers.. David Olusoga, introduces his book Black and British, an exploration of the relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. Guess wed have to print it. This is a moral argument. In 1796, a bill was defeated by only four votes: a group of abolitionist MPs went to the opera and missed the vote. A covering letter would be a courtesy but probably not a necessity. Hey, we do not even have to go that far. Cest de la trs bonne dialectique conomique. And tolerance is not a given. One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. Reckon they found commenters guessing which parts of a hypothetical argument were meant all part of the fun, In many respects youre one of the posters here whose views on morality Im closest to our personal moralities probably being quite far apart, but I recognise mine as very much the product of my upbringing and surrounding society and know enough about other places and times to realise just how contingent that makes them. I assume he is not very bright and Race Hustling is very lucrative. And the transatlantic slave trade? There is no reason to single White people out for unique levels of criticism. Its very noticable how nobodys mentioning that the Spanish Empire were doing this for several centuries before the British got involved. However, it applies to at least 80% of Americans. It's possibly a deeper change than some people realise because I don't think what we're living through is a series of political events; I think we're living through a generational shift," he says. Maybe someone should advise him to button his lip before he stirs up something he may not like. And Britain worked for the whole of the 19th century to put down slavery in Africa. 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. Tim says there might be some truth to them for the Caribbean. Thats why when the question is raised, I always point out that they owe me lots and lots of money. David Olusoga Historian, broadcaster and film-maker. Good point, I wonder how he squares the obviously comfortable living he has writing, opining and broadcasting about slavery with his principles. I assume these were usually killed before Europeans turned up and bought them. My first reaction, years and years ago, was thats awful. What difference has it made? "They were barely known even to historians. We aint paying no goddam reparations & no-ones gonna make us. And any reparations should be paid 50% by the African states for the areas which sold the slaves and pocketed the proceeds. Cheap ass presentism. 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. And yet anti-black race riots broke out in 1948 in Liverpool and in 1958 in Nottingham and Londons Notting Hill. 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. Its a shame Whitey bad, give me cash? Over 150 years in America. Needless to say they should pay us reparations for this too. Dr Peter Olusoga is a senior psychology lecturer at Sheffield Hallam university. It was the first of the slave narratives that I'd ever read and I found it astonishing.". My family did nothing. The Celtic version of slavery (which ran to quite a different model) was still going on in the places the Romans didnt reach. The economics of the slave trade may have meant that it was cheaper to work someone to death rather than allowing him a comfortable old age. TV presenter David Olusoga has told the Edinburgh TV Festival his career had sometimes left him feeling "crushed, isolated," and "disempowered". "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. 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).. That needs to change, The autonomous future is nearly here with Wejo, The need to grow Londons EV infrastructure at speed and scale, From royal trumpeter to chief diver, Miranda Kaufmann uncovers the Africans of Tudor Britain, The big consultancy con, with Mariana Mazzucato, The rise and fall of Nicola Sturgeon Audio Long Reads, Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance, HR, Training and Organisational Development, Information and Communications Technology, Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives, Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities, Science and Technical Research and Development. It could have ended earlier, but the planter interests in parliament defeated William Wilberforces attempts. 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. We do not know for sure. Anti-black riots broke out in Liverpool that year. There is an alternative argument that it is their ancestors who were wronged hence deserve compensation and as descendants theyre entitled to an inherited share (so their portion depends on how many slaves at what position in the family tree) plus interest, regardless of how well theyre doing now. Abolition was the first mass philanthropic movement in Britain, and it ended the slave trade in 1807. In 1860, cotton goods accounted for 40 per cent of all British exports. 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. Tull played professional football for Northampton but instead of signing up for Glasgow Rangers, he enlisted. . The answer is money. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. Roman writers such as Pliny who chronicled or rather fabricated African life shaped perceptions of a continent populated by anthropophagi and other fantastic creatures, half-human, half-animal. 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. But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided. Olusoga is of half Nigerian descent. Even did something positive. It is a form of self-loathing. That assumes an increase in demand. Why are these characterizations needed? The novel became the bestselling book of 19th-century Britain; it was adapted for the theatre and generated mass-produced merchandise playing cards, jigsaws, tableware. David Olusoga, 49, is a television presenter and historian. How does importing new labour from West Africa solve the food shortage in the West Indies? If you are wracked with guilt, ashamed of your forebears, do it! And the fact youre moved to tears by discovering for the first time a great-great-great-grandmother of yours was a prostitute single-mum with seven kids or a great-x5-uncle you had never heard of was imprisoned for murder, well, your utter lack of knowledge simply reveals how little youve been influenced by them, so youre hardly discovering a new facet of yourself at all. It wasnt always so & it may not be in the future. The Sokoto Caliphate probably had as many slaves and a lot fewer free men as the Old South. Instead the racket still goes on with endless boatloads of illegals swarming into Europe. In the 15th and 16th centuries, thousands of pounds of gold were shipped to Europe. Olusoga patterns his narrative after Fryers, starting with the North African presence in Roman Britain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestmannaeyjar, Slavery in England definitely continued for a couple of generations after the Norman Conquest and Bristol was a major export centre, though there were attempts to ban the export trade in particular (https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds has some interesting quotes from the time). "The small minority whose history had been airbrushed out of the national story recovered that history with the help of their allies and then broadcast it, spread it into our national conversation and they did that within the space of half a century. And that still stands even if there really are a bunch of torturing murderers out there too. Fuck right off As a winning debating strategy. I imagine few do. Olusoga poses as an objective historian and says he is not there to bring comfort to people. Id say the same to the Black Lives Matter people. Heroes of 2020 What Marcus Rashford's campaign for hungry children tells us about . Yet American slave-produced raw cotton continued to feed the 4,500 mills of Lancashire. 7 years was the average working lifespan so it is said. How could Britain, a civilised and Christian nation, indulge in rape, torture, killing and the forced labour of Africans over two centuries? But maybe they did not. What do you think their stongest argument is? 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. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. They may have been turning people they would have killed into a profitable commodity. 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 know there are posters on here who see stepping into their opponents perspective as a dangerous and pointless endeavour that gives undue worth to a viewpoint they despise, but purely as a mental exercise theres usually something to be said for examining your opponents strongest argument instead of their weakest. In the UK its not white people enslaving blacks anymore, but Asians enslaving other Asians, as in Leicesters clothing sweatshops. Sugar plantations were bad. Welsh slave-raids into England continued until early Norman times. Not sure theyd do that with modern sensibilities mind you. Shipwrecked off the coast of Africa, he, and other survivors, were taken by an African tribe as captives. White people are unique in ending slavery across the world*. 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. "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.". So wherever the wealth came from, it wasnt just slavery (or even mainly), Olusogas an alright presenter but a class A race hustler, Edward Lud August 30, 2020 at 9:12 am 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.. 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. BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3, The Meaning of Zong, Spacious open-plan family home in Muswell Hill, Five Cineworlds across south London still at risk of permanent closure, Residents who have 'suffered for years' to be asked if they want blocks knocked down, Dazzling Thamesmead light festival returns with performances, films and flash mob, Charlton murderer claims prison guards broke his arm and sues for 20k, Children and young people with eating disorders face treatment postcode lottery, Angry protests erupt over Greek rail disaster, How fake copyright complaints are muzzling journalists, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. Surely the US has already spent much more than that on black Americans. Flyover Americans arent going to take it. When Olusoga recalled the experience before television cameras last year, he wept. There is plenty of slavery about we just do not call it that. Not good. MyBurningEars August 30, 2020 at 3:31 pm Deliberately shipping that many people that far in order to participate in a newly-created society whose economic system was designed, pretty much from the ground up, around slave labour?, 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., But there have been other societies with slavery where slaves had more autonomy and a greater chance of buying their freedom.. Full text must be online somewhere but theres an extract at https://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-real-vikings/articles/eyewitness-to-the-vikings. Different people can argue the toss from different viewpoints and perspectives but in many ways their arguments pass each other like ships in the night, because they havent all got nobodys got an absolute frame of reference to judge things with respect to. You can be redeemed, you worthless pasty people. The world has seen more slavery since its abolition than before. Not to say it was nice. I cant see the point of denying it was all pretty awful. White communities suffer huge losses from Black crime. 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? I personally dont find that as convincing as the case that slaves themselves deserved compensation, and while there were strong political and practical reasons owners were compensated upon abolition but not their former slaves, it doesnt leave a great moral taste in the mouth that twas so. Joining them is Psychologist and Lecturer at Lancaster University, Dr David Tod, for a fascinating conversation about the psychology of acting. Peter Pan & Wendy is a live-action reimagining of the J.M . Sloane witnessed and later became part of a system ruled by terror. First launched in London in 1987, it aims to highlight and celebrate what black people have achieved in Britain throughout history. You know, entirely ignoring lifetime effects? Though I dont know where wed get $12 trillion in Confederate currency. 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 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.". If black lives really mattered these people would be protesting the 500 shot dead so far by predominantly black men in Chicago this year. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, 30,000 Jewish migrants from Russia and Eastern Europe settled in Manchester. Shouldnt Olusoga be writing in Ubangi bantu-language? @ Boganboy Id say theres enormous dangers in treating this as if it was some public school debating society gig. I have done nothing. Get back to us when youve developed your historicalguiltometer. She had no interest in esoteric discussions of the war. Young people - such as Lavinya Stennett who founded the Black Curriculum campaign group - have been calling for change. Married an American GI after the war. I think it's an astonishing achievement.". While I dont think they persuaded anyone, they did shift perspectives a bit. I still find arguing the toss, or watching others doing so, interesting partly because it shows how the viewpoints are divergent, how many arguments are self-interested, what social, cultural and economic forces are at work behind it all. As would Beyonce. As Black British History Month draws to a close, TV historian Prof David Olusoga looks at the impact it's had - and how young people are taking it on. So there were times when food was expensive, we can call those shortages or famines. He saw how enslaved people who had risen up were burnt to death, castrated or mutilated, punishments he regarded as merited. ", TV historian rejects 'nonsense' over keeping statues, What Black History Month is - and why it matters. The system he witnessed and wrote about was one in which human beings were worked to death. 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. Which of those societies does Olusogas ancestry come from? The vast majority of Americans are not guilty. They have a game plan & youre falling for it. A renowned economist has said that $12 trillion should be afforded to black Americans in reparation for slavery to help the close wealth gap.. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion?. Quite possibly slave-raiding Gaels before that. "They're not looking to history only to make them feel good and give them comfort, but they're looking to history to tell them things about truths about their society that we have traditionally edited out of British history.". But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided, so I dont think the traders can be given a pass on this front either. Your email address will not be published. Like I need to hand my cash to the next lass of Rus descent I see, lest she remind me of some unlucky slave-girl that may or may not have perished at the hands of my maybe-ancestors? His dad met his mom at the city's university in the 1960s. Hundreds of White women raped every day. 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. By this logic, we ought to sue the African American community. Video, 00:02:30. 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. As for the future, the University of Manchester professor says younger generations give him hope. There is no reason to think one system was more or less brutal than the other. Yet theyre so many centuries and generations removed from the crime, everybody involved with the decision-making is long-dead and while the responsible state still exists, in practice compensation comes from taxes paid by citizens who had no part in it all. A weekly round-up of some of the best articles featured in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, sent each Saturday. He was a prominent figure in the campaign to abolish slavery. 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. But its still awful, even on a historical scale. Get back to us when your sin/privilege is expunged. Sooner or later, we whites are going to have to take a stand, and say we aint taking this any more. Well the universe has a law of gravity but it doesnt have a law of should there be reparations. This year, return to Neverland. Both groups today, especially the former, could reasonably claim historic persecution has reduced their present income and wealth. many African tribes kept slaves. If the alternative was that they were killed? Inflaming the reader has no purpose relative to slavery. 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. But those were in those long-lost days when democrats and republicans could talk to each other and agree to disagree while both leaving the conversation a little the wiser. 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.. Pope Nicholas V gave his blessing, so long as the Vatican benefited. When I met her, ~1995, I started asking her questions about the war, as I thought she was a fabulous resource of information. The enslaved Africans had to wait another five years for their freedom and were not given a penny. That star stuff wont last. Was never entirely sure which bits were believed and which bits were just a fun bit of intellectual muscle-flexing couldnt all have been intended seriously since so many posts contradicted each other. But morals are very transient things. He talks about slavery because YOU care. Probably few other societies had as much chance of buying freedom. It seems absurd to me that anyone should be concerned about what happened 200 or 500 years ago. One issue about Westerners buying slaves via a chain of commerce that often ultimately involved Africans selling other Africans at traditional slave-trading locations (there was some slave-raiding by Europeans directly, but rarer) is that the extra demand distorted the market, led directly to more armed slave-raiding expeditions against rival tribes and so on. Black and British: A Forgotten History 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. Thats fine, BraveFart. December 2020. They organised a boycott of sugar, produced more petitions and hosted meetings. Needless to say, the national mood changed. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. 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. "The way history is viewed is changing. This is because forgetting slavery means forgetting its victims. Not many remember anything about segregation either. What is their strongest argument? Olusoga has benefited from and added significantly to the work of Fryer and other historians such as James Walvin. He was immersed in it. A House Through Time returned to BBC Two in May for its third season, and once again is fronted by historian extraordinaire David Olusoga. MBE: The problem with the UK paying reparations is that people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes. Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. Ive always agreed that the Africans should pay reparations to the rest of us for dumping all those people they wanted to get rid of on us. I havent said anything about my personal sense of guilt or responsibility. I was uncomfortable using it. Their demands should simply be refused. "They do not want British history to be a catalogue of heroes and victories and glorious chapters," he says. Video, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3: The Meaning of Zong, BBC Bitesize: The Zong 1781-1783 - The triangular trade, during a debate on Black History and Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Explosive found in check-in luggage at US airport, Fungus case forces Jack Daniels to halt construction, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine, Fire knocks out half of Argentina's power grid, Havana Syndrome unlikely to have hostile cause - US, Starbucks illegally fired workers over union - judge. But Muslims were enslaving white Europeans into Africa long before the Atlantic route, usually castrating the males. Because it isnt about who you are, its about who your ancestors were. One in which enslaved people suffered and even died from malnutrition, as the economics of the slave trade meant that it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them than it was to provide them with food. 2023 BBC. My great grandfather fought to end slavery in a war. 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. Thousands of petitions were presented to parliament.