Theres probably more mileage in my country, or at least its historical incarnation, fought against it because unlike the actual people involved, the state is still around. If black lives really mattered these people would be protesting the 500 shot dead so far by predominantly black men in Chicago this year. 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. But its still awful, even on a historical scale. Hundreds of White women raped every day. 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. A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown. That is not true. She had no interest in esoteric discussions of the war. Yet American slave-produced raw cotton continued to feed the 4,500 mills of Lancashire. Would the good professor really be so different if genealogical records could prove he had African ancestors who owned African slaves? "Equiano is the most important voice that we have from the British experience of slavery and the slave trade," he said. 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. Whoever has the upper-hand in power political, cultural, economic, military or whatever other form is decisive at that moment. Might, in this case, being 100% of the debating point. If the alternative was that they were killed? 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. 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. Anglo-Saxons had slaves. If you want to pay more tax, just write a cheque to HMRC and send it off. The following decades were taken up with popular and political rhetoric about immigration and parliamentary acts to limit blacks coming to Britain. The world has seen more slavery since its abolition than before. The evidence of this is that seasoned slaves, those exposed to the environment, sold for up to 50% more than new ones. 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). Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. If you think 14 is the wrong decision for the boundary, a better argument is a rebuttal of the strongest case for 14 rather than a rebuttal of a straw-man version of it. The answer is money. So is Richard Murphy. Get back to us when youve developed your historicalguiltometer. But slaves were more valuable, so the British fought the Spanish for a share in the trade and eventually came to dominate it. Definitely didnt die out with the Romans. 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. (At least in our society) Get over it. My argument is that Africans were probably happily killing each other for women before the West turned up. 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". 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. Those aged 11-14 have to be taught about the British Empire between 1745-1901, however the slave trade is one of nine examples given by the Department of Education on what can be taught. Whitey bad, give me cash? Pope Nicholas V gave his blessing, so long as the Vatican benefited. Eventually, 11,000 separate British slave-trading expeditions resulted in the trafficking of three-and-a-half-million Africans to the New World plantations, the greatest forced migration in modern history until the 20th century. In the case of slavery the answer is clear. TV historian David Olusoga claims it is "palpable nonsense" to say that removing controversial statues "somehow impoverishes history". But there have been other societies with slavery where slaves had more autonomy and a greater chance of buying their freedom. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has . I think a case could be made. 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. Fired by religious feeling, they embarked on a campaign of public education and political lobbying unprecedented in scale and revolutionary in nature. 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. 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. Welsh slave-raids into England continued until early Norman times. The Royal African Company, established by Charles II in 1672, eventually enslaved and transported more Africans than any other company in British history. That assumes an increase in demand. 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. (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.) Tull played professional football for Northampton but instead of signing up for Glasgow Rangers, he enlisted. Latin America for instance. He was immersed in it. Anti-black riots broke out in Liverpool that year. In the UK its not white people enslaving blacks anymore, but Asians enslaving other Asians, as in Leicesters clothing sweatshops. . Shouldnt Olusoga be writing in Ubangi bantu-language? 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. This history of the black presence in . . If slavery really mattered theyd be campaigning for reparations from the blacks and arabs/moslems who were doing it long before the white man arrived in Africa and was far more devastating. But maybe they did not. 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. 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. I brought up paedophilia to demonstrate that there are things not worth my time. The details of difference are fairly minor. I do not see what is different between a plantation in Africa and a plantation in Virginia. His dad met his mom at the city's university in the 1960s. Married an American GI after the war. Re putting the argument for paedophilia they actually gave Gide the Nobel prize for literature didnt they? They have a game plan & youre falling for it. 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. it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them So my advice would be, for his own health, STFU. David Olusoga is a 49-year-old historian and presenter Credit: Getty - Contributor David Olusoga is a British Nigerian historian, broadcaster and writer. 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.. 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. many African tribes kept slaves. Its an interesting exercise to consider, given we live within such a system, how or whether that contradiction can be settled. Just as how in the 16th century the anti-slavery voices in Europe were overwhelmed, and in the 19th century the abolitionists won out. My great, great, grandfather was one. I cant see the point of denying it was all pretty awful. They did not care much for adult males. Prof David Olusoga has presented numerous documentaries including A House Through Time and Black and Black and British: A Forgotten History, Olaudah Equiano played a role in Britain's abolishment of slavery, Performer Giles Terera has written a play featuring Equiano, Prof Olusoga said when it was published, people did not believe the book was by an African as it was deemed so well written, Bernardine Evaristo (second left) has launched a series called Black Britain: Writing Back which features novels by black British authors that have been overlooked, Should black history be taught all year round? Joining them is Psychologist and Lecturer at Lancaster University, Dr David Tod, for a fascinating conversation about the psychology of acting. His exposure to Nigerian culture seems quite limited. How does importing new labour from West Africa solve the food shortage in the West Indies? 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.. He writes to inflame white guilt, so that you will ACCEPT destruction of your culture. Should black history be taught all year round? Peter Olusoga. Whether they are too stupid to think of that remains to be seen. Would probably have taken your suggestion as a challenge. Not sure theyd do that with modern sensibilities mind you. He seems to be an interesting social historian and his TV series on the occupants of a single house over the centuries is very good, although I suspect a lot of the research is done by others, I look forward to an even handed expose of the entire slave trade from birth to capture, imprisonment, sale, transportation, arrival, sale, treatment and life while enslaved as well as the UKs role in stopping it, But it wont be on the BBC, and he wont be writing it I fear, @smfs Heroes of 2020 What Marcus Rashford's campaign for hungry children tells us about . 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. A renowned economist has said that $12 trillion should be afforded to black Americans in reparation for slavery to help the close wealth gap.. What has Nigeria ever done for him? And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. It seems absurd to me that anyone should be concerned about what happened 200 or 500 years ago. Thankfully the Woke have gifted us an all purpos3e response to this sort of crap. West Indians fought with the Allies more than a hundred were decorated. 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. Because it isnt about who you are, its about who your ancestors were. "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. 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. Thy did not try to grow or raise the next generation. As would Beyonce. Such sources give his writing freshness, originality and compassion. Instead he has become a campaigner working to discredit Britain, the country that has educated him, promoted him and brought him fame and acceptance. The historian tells Michael Segalov about getting up early, reading George Orwell, taking his dog George for a walk, playing his guitar He is the author of the 2016 book Black and British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award 2017 and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2017. No doubt life expectancy of a slave was shorter than that for a free man. "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. Rather the constitution banned the slave trade and so it become economically worth it to make sure slaves lived longer. Its very noticable how nobodys mentioning that the Spanish Empire were doing this for several centuries before the British got involved. I cant see this one surviving people being expected to dig into their pockets for a few trillion. One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. December 2020. Dr Peter Olusoga is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. Thats fine, BraveFart. people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes And any reparations should be paid 50% by the African states for the areas which sold the slaves and pocketed the proceeds. Jamaicans and Nigerians used to hate each other. Good point, I wonder how he squares the obviously comfortable living he has writing, opining and broadcasting about slavery with his principles. The rest of this looks like the usual white washing (so to speak) of African slavery. Nor do I think that sugar is worse than cotton. 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. In that moment, his interest in history overlapped. David Olusoga, introduces his book Black and British, an exploration of the relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. I am of Ulster Scot heritage, who were originally John Knoxs Cumberland Presbyterians, VERY MUCH against slavery. 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 phenomena of which he is iconic is one that we have written out, edited out of our nation. Indeed in many cases, whose ancestors didnt even live in France or England at the relevant time. "I have," he admits, "a habit of . 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). Its a replay of the ecology nutters & the trannies. 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. After all, adult males were all but worthless and demand for women might have been enough to drive the trade anyway. I was doing some genealogy research when I discovered my great grandfather was a well known member of the 18th Kentucky Infantry. I have that estimate saved and ready to be critiqued as part of a larger project. 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.. He is a Cultural Marxist trying to destroy the West. The thing we British are ancestrally responsible for is beginning and continuing to pursue the extinction of the sordid business of slavery. Oh man. So there were times when food was expensive, we can call those shortages or famines. Even did something positive. 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? 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. Obama had none. As he states, The oral history of 20th-century racial violence has never been collected or collated, but it is thereand it is shocking.. And he might not find the society withdraws it nearly as comfortable for him to live in. My family did nothing. You can pay all the reparation for historical slavery related wrongs, real or imaginary, you want. . To be honest, I was a bit sceptical about the Olympics coming to London, but the atmosphere across the capital was genuinely wonderful . At the moment it seems to regarded as a good thing. 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. "He was the voice of somebody who wasn't speaking about the past as a historian, but was living it. Sloane witnessed and later became part of a system ruled by terror. The enslaved Africans had to wait another five years for their freedom and were not given a penny. 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. The race obsessed Department of Education goes to considerable lengths to distinguish Caribbeans and West Africans. Women such as Elizabeth Heyrick continued to lobby for the abolition of slavery. It may not. I just dont really get what Olusoga is saying. My great grandfather fought to end slavery in a war. Olusoga is making an appeal to white guilt. 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. His choice of subject and his choice of material make that very clear. Reasonable estimates have some 50% of the inhabitants of the Sokoto Caliphate as late as the late 19th cent being slaves. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. 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? One of his teachers had a coffee mug bearing a National Front slogan and another attacked him during a school trip, he said. When I met her, ~1995, I started asking her questions about the war, as I thought she was a fabulous resource of information. 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. They deliberately bought skewed mostly male gender balance. Certainly they killed them casually often for religious reasons. 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. BZZZTT!! And tolerance is not a given. 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