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. That involved killing the adult men. Like the Nigerian slavers who enslaved and sold the slaves, you mean? 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. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. He previously worked at JP Morgan for 18 years in a number of senior roles and was . David Olusoga, introduces his book Black and British, an exploration of the relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. "Equiano is the most important voice that we have from the British experience of slavery and the slave trade," he said. June 16, 2020 - 20:29 BST Aisha Nozari. There is no reason to single White people out for unique levels of criticism. Very little sugar on the mainland. at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too.. They deliberately bought skewed mostly male gender balance. He is the undisputed King of the Internet Pedants and Lord of the Unnecessary Snark. Such sources give his writing freshness, originality and compassion. Thats what I dont like about the angle of Tims header. Well the universe has a law of gravity but it doesnt have a law of should there be reparations. Why are these characterizations needed? So there were times when food was expensive, we can call those shortages or famines. 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. 2023 BBC. You may concede a point here, a point there. 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. Fired by religious feeling, they embarked on a campaign of public education and political lobbying unprecedented in scale and revolutionary in nature. Some other buyer would have taken them if they werent shipped out, and Western (or Arab) traders were just changing the ownership and location, the sins of the slave-raiders being theirs alone to bear. 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. West Indians fought with the Allies more than a hundred were decorated. Your email address will not be published. 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. But it is also likely that disease played a role. Dont even get me started on the Moors, Arabs and Ottomans, As for getting rich many African tribes kept slaves and their societies did not get rich. Not a big fan of the odd human sacrifice Im afraid, even though I might just be of very partial Scandinavian descent myself. 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. And that still stands even if there really are a bunch of torturing murderers out there too. A fifty quid note in the hand of the first black bloke you encounter. How could Britain, a civilised and Christian nation, indulge in rape, torture, killing and the forced labour of Africans over two centuries? But Ill tell you what, slavery and human sacrifice, still awful. Video, 00:02:30. 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. I had a girlfriend whose mother was a Nazi. Sloane witnessed and later became part of a system ruled by terror. He was born in Nigeria but arrived in the . That was when the Democrats were still Americans. It does not take people long to starve to death and slaves were paid for. 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. 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. We aint paying no goddam reparations & no-ones gonna make us. 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. So is Richard Murphy. I can then give him the details of other descendants, he can apologise to and compensate. He is a Cultural Marxist trying to destroy the West. But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided. . It may not. That someone did something 200 years ago means double ought nothing. 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?). In the USA? So this race baiter can try his guilt trip on someone else. That is not true. Reasonable estimates have some 50% of the inhabitants of the Sokoto Caliphate as late as the late 19th cent being slaves. You lost those two. 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.. A covering letter would be a courtesy but probably not a necessity. Very often shaped by the political, technological and economic forces of the times if the Western way of life had remained utterly dependent on Roman-style slavery, Im not sure wed ever have abolished it even amongst our own inhabitants. "The way history is viewed is changing. 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. White people will take it. 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. 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. Nobody will stop you, honest. Wrong ?!?! 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. 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. Indeed in many cases, whose ancestors didnt even live in France or England at the relevant time. When I met her, ~1995, I started asking her questions about the war, as I thought she was a fabulous resource of information. 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. If more African-Americans started to vote Republican and the Democrats felt they needed something radical to boost their offer, and had enough support from liberal whites and other groups to risk further losses among blue-collar whites, for example. 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. 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. And he might not find the society withdraws it nearly as comfortable for him to live in. But a group of 12 disciples of Christ set out to change things. I have that estimate saved and ready to be critiqued as part of a larger project. You can be redeemed, you worthless pasty people. However, it applies to at least 80% of Americans. Hey, we do not even have to go that far. I do not see what is different between a plantation in Africa and a plantation in Virginia. 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. 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. So my advice would be, for his own health, STFU. It's against this backdrop that Black British History Month was created. Even Bill Clinton had affinity for the USA. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, 30,000 Jewish migrants from Russia and Eastern Europe settled in Manchester. Slaves were crowded in a new environment with new diseases. As would Beyonce. That hes able to write this article is because hes living in what is, by historical standards, a remarkably tolerant society. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Thy did not try to grow or raise the next generation. They also ran a slave trade to the Ottoman empire and white slavery in the north without any help from Europeans. Oh man. 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? As it happens, I dont believe in sins of the fathers passing down the generations. Id say this to Mr Olusoga. Exactly, bis. No one has said we should not consider someone elses viewpoint. And the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. 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. 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.. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. In that moment, his interest in history overlapped. ", TV historian rejects 'nonsense' over keeping statues, What Black History Month is - and why it matters. They may not be happy about Dresden or Hiroshima but their lives are much better. Blacks like Mr Olusoga despite endlessly banging on about it seem to overlook the fact that they are in a minority. Its very noticable how nobodys mentioning that the Spanish Empire were doing this for several centuries before the British got involved. In 1986 I came across the book Staying Power by the British journalist Peter Fryer. To me personally, this is the thing. Cheap ass presentism. The thing we British are ancestrally responsible for is beginning and continuing to pursue the extinction of the sordid business of slavery. Oblong, . They organised a boycott of sugar, produced more petitions and hosted meetings. Needless to say they should pay us reparations for this too. Olusogas ancestors will have participated in the capture of sale of slaves in Nigeria. The New Statesmans global affairs newsletter, every Monday and Friday. In the case of slavery the answer is clear. Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. Abolition was the first mass philanthropic movement in Britain, and it ended the slave trade in 1807. He was immersed in it. Obama had none. David Olusoga is a 49-year-old historian and presenter Credit: Getty - Contributor David Olusoga is a British Nigerian historian, broadcaster and writer. David will . Whitey bad, give me cash? Olusoga is of half Nigerian descent. Olusogas stated purpose is to argue that black British history is not about migration and settlement, whether of black servants in the 18th century or black workers in the Windrush era. 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. Olusoga poses as an objective historian and says he is not there to bring comfort to people. 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. You know, entirely ignoring lifetime effects? So he calls himself a Geordie. At the moment it seems to regarded as a good thing. And yet anti-black race riots broke out in 1948 in Liverpool and in 1958 in Nottingham and Londons Notting Hill. 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. 7 years was the average working lifespan so it is said. "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. She had no interest in esoteric discussions of the war. There is plenty of slavery about we just do not call it that. 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. Dr Peter Olusoga is a senior psychology lecturer at Sheffield Hallam university. By this logic, we ought to sue the African American community. By David Dabydeen (Photo By Alamy) Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. Then dont discuss it. Definitely didnt die out with the Romans. 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. This ignorant fellow should study historical facts, rather than believing and repeating lies and half-truths. Nor do I think that sugar is worse than cotton. No. Though I dont know where wed get $12 trillion in Confederate currency. David Olusoga Historian, broadcaster and film-maker. 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. They may have been turning people they would have killed into a profitable commodity. How does importing new labour from West Africa solve the food shortage in the West Indies? Just means they werent alone in being in the wrong. 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. Once insignificant villages, great cities such as Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow sprang up on the profits of slavery. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. , originality and compassion presenter Credit: Getty - Contributor David Olusoga is senior! 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