One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. Cheap ass presentism. Long after he had published Corydon, his defence of pederasty. Various among the societies that were agglomerated into Nigeria were more or less involved in that slave trade from the supply end. Even did something positive. In 1796, a bill was defeated by only four votes: a group of abolitionist MPs went to the opera and missed the vote. Get back to us when your sin/privilege is expunged. 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. Even Bill Clinton had affinity for the USA. The agreement is being touted as a . People seem pretty much agreed on what is right and what is wrong. Needless to say they should pay us reparations for this too. There are probably a thousand organisations, charities and assorted grifters who would happily cash your cheque. The Celtic version of slavery (which ran to quite a different model) was still going on in the places the Romans didnt reach. David Olusoga meets Janice Haber and her family, the descendents of Jewish . Their demands should simply be refused. people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes This is a moral argument. What would happen to that money, who knows, but as its (or was) your money, thats between you and your grifter of choice. After all, adult males were all but worthless and demand for women might have been enough to drive the trade anyway. 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. What do you think their stongest argument is? 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. Perhaps Im a bit more culturally relativist these days, but just read it again, still absolutely awful. The vast majority of Americans are not guilty. I have a peeve about the BBC genealogical show Who do you think you are? which I dont know whether has been inflected upon the Left Pond. 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. Olusoga brilliantly reveals such contradictions in British society. Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. The system he witnessed and wrote about was one in which human beings were worked to death. Not sure how sick this makes me. And he might not find the society withdraws it nearly as comfortable for him to live in. 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. 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. And yes, grand scheme of things, forced choice between living in a central Asian city about to be captured by ticked-off Mongols and an African tribal group about to be captured by profit-hungry slavers then fine, I take the latter hands down. They deliberately bought skewed mostly male gender balance. Whitey bad, give me cash? They organised a boycott of sugar, produced more petitions and hosted meetings. Over 1000 years in Britain. The exception is Tim Worstall, who is truly the Ron Jeremy of blogging. The strongest argument I can see for reparations is not that white people bear some kind of ancestral blame. Olusoga is just getting even because he was attacked by the right when he was a teenager. Then the second. Would probably have taken your suggestion as a challenge. The answer is money. Which of those societies does Olusogas ancestry come from? I have that estimate saved and ready to be critiqued as part of a larger project. The problem with slavery is that it left us with their descendents and weak minded White populations. She wasnt interested in my academic pursuit. 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. But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided. 2023 BBC. Dont know if I would rule it out entirely because the demographics are different but it might need a change in the voting dynamics. Over 150 years in America. 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. "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. Thats fine, BraveFart. Young people - such as Lavinya Stennett who founded the Black Curriculum campaign group - have been calling for change. 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. That someone did something 200 years ago means double ought nothing.. Not good. Id say this to Mr Olusoga. 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. Sooner or later, we whites are going to have to take a stand, and say we aint taking this any more. Maybe someone should advise him to button his lip before he stirs up something he may not like. MBE, do not entertain these people, not for one second. Might, in this case, being 100% of the debating point. His dad met his mom at the city's university in the 1960s. 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. Like I said before, tolerance is in the gift of the powerful. 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. My first reaction, years and years ago, was thats awful. Then the adult men became profitable too. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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). Shouldnt Olusoga be writing in Ubangi bantu-language? Black and British: A Forgotten History addresses one of the greatest silences in British historiography. That was a bad experience but he should know that you cannot judge a whole country by what happened when he was young. And yet Africans and West Indians were banned from the victory parade in 1919. And they will go looking for parts of the past that aren't on the curriculum, and they evidently do. 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.. If we look back history is just an unending series of atrocities. 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. (At least in our society) Get over it. Britain should be proud of helping to stop (African to America) slavery, like the Republican Party and unlike the Democrats. 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. In fact he is a biased political campaigner working to attack and do as much damage to Britain as he can. He was Chairman of Moneysupermarket Group from 2014 to 2019 and Senior Independent Director of Close Brothers Group plc from 2006 to 2014 and is a Past President of the Chartered Management Institute. Over 1000 years in Britain. Would also apply even if down a different family line there had been beneficiaries of the slave trade. They did not care much for adult males. Some were sold to other African tribes and the rest kept as slaves. If the alternative was that they were killed? Maybe Europeans did increase demand. David Olusoga, 49, is a television presenter and historian. 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. My great, great, grandfather was one. 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. Heroes of 2020 What Marcus Rashford's campaign for hungry children tells us about . And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. "The way history is viewed is changing. Get back to us when youve developed your historicalguiltometer. By David Dabydeen (Photo By Alamy) Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. 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. Its a replay of the ecology nutters & the trannies. That was when the Democrats were still Americans. 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. They included Josiah Wedgwood (the pottery entrepreneur), Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. It happened. 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. Then, in October, came a breakthrough. My great grandfather fought to end slavery in a war. 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. He was a prominent figure in the campaign to abolish slavery. Id agree that attitudes in the UK are approaching that situation, but theres still a long, long way to go yet. What is their strongest argument? We pretend we do not like slavery but actually we do not like slave traders. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. Sloane witnessed and later became part of a system ruled by terror. The rest apart from Ireland (17, partly due to influence of aforementioned Patrick) set it younger. David then moved with his mother and three siblings in the north-east of the UK. He saw how enslaved people who had risen up were burnt to death, castrated or mutilated, punishments he regarded as merited. The government has said the "flexibility within the history curriculum means that there is the opportunity for teachers to teach about BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) history across a spectrum of themes and eras" so it did "not believe it was necessary to change the curriculum". Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. In 1860, cotton goods accounted for 40 per cent of all British exports. Get back to me in seven years, when youre ready to order. It wasnt always so & it may not be in the future. How does it benefit anyone to make an issue about particular events? The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion?. The evidence of this is that seasoned slaves, those exposed to the environment, sold for up to 50% more than new ones. Blacks like Mr Olusoga despite endlessly banging on about it seem to overlook the fact that they are in a minority. Kyle Rittenhouse, unlike the rest of their sorry asses, did something. "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.". If you are wracked with guilt, ashamed of your forebears, do it! "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. 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. It may have made sense for the SS to starve labourers to death. To be honest, I was a bit sceptical about the Olympics coming to London, but the atmosphere across the capital was genuinely wonderful . 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