To think descendants of slave owners should visit former plantations?

Whilst if voluntarily done it is a good thing, you cannot make people alive today responsible for the sins of forefathers, many generations later, and if there is family money now it will be mostly due to business decisions and prudent decisions since that period as it's now 200 years later in the case of the UK.

Absolutely this!

I think if you know your wealth and advantage has come from the exploitation of others and you can clearly see the legacy of that then the decent thing is to try and redress it. I don't think that involves big performative visits and poverty tourism. Quiet donations to help the people still suffering because of what happened to make you rich is enough.

well quite intrestingly according to this article, total profits from the slave trade, had they been invested entirely in Britain, would have accounted for about three per cent of all capital formation in 1770.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/did-britain-s-wealth-really-come-from-the-slave-trade/

Is England (particularly old money/ upper classes) not full of inherited wealth??

Where did this come from I wonder? It was largely generated by no strange coincidence, from the slave trade and other atrocities, such as the Irish famine.

The term slave has its origins in the word slav. The slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD.

The word from which slave derived referred to white people - Slavs of Eastern Europe.

No I don’t think it’s obligatory as it’s nothing you have done personally.

Also, how far back are we going with this guilt? Should every Norwegian feel bad that the vikings invaded Britain? I don’t see groups of mournful Norwegians shuffling miserably around the British coastline!

Don't forget White People have been slaves too . Indentured Irish sent to Jamaica , the Barbary Pirates snatching young White Women off the Devon / Cornish coast . It's not all one sided .

Because it's much more difficult to do something about modern slavery rather than bang on about feeling guilty for something that happened years before we were all born.

Huh www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65440287
She is descendent from Sir Charles Trevelyan

Great post

As it happens I visited a plantation in the last few weeks. It was a powerful experience and I'd recommend it to anyone. Trying to understand our history is important.

But this trend in trying to make people accountable for the past wrongs of their ancestors is problematic. Life/history is too messy for this to be done in any meaningful way. Better for us all to live as good a life as we can in the here and now.

If you started with those that made them slaves and then sold them you may have a point.
You may also have a point if you included all of those that sold slaves and not just the Atlantic slave trade,

To be fair, if they still live in Germany there's a good chance they have visited.

There’s several aspects that always get muddled up together in these kind of debates

Firstly, the strong, the rich, the powerful, the cruel, have always exploited others, for all of recorded history for thousands of years. On all scales from individuals through families, clans, businesses and nation states. It’s a sad aspect of human nature and is as true today as it’s ever been and I can’t see that ever changing. Realistically all we can do is mitigate the worst of it through laws to protect the weaker, but it will never go away, just find new routes of exploitation, like playing whack-a-mole.

Secondly, the consideration of what is cruel and exploitative behaviour changes with time. Slavery is a well known example, something again that goes back thousands of years. It is in the Bible and is accepted by Jesus. It took until the eighteenth century for enough white people to start saying hang on, this isn’t right and they had to really fight against others with their bibles saying it’s a totally normal part of human society. Today of course it is condemned by all mainstream society, except as PP have said, it still goes on and we all turn a blind eye.

Following on from that is the tendency to judge history through the lens of today’s values. People we condemn today may have been law abiding, upstanding, admired citizens of their day (eg Colston). We will be judged in years to come for doing things that our descendants will consider abhorrent by their standards, probably related to pollution and climate change.

So I think all we can do today is examine our consciences to ask ourselves - am I living by the right values, do I do wrong by others, have I done so in the past. Can I address those wrongs. Laura Trevalyn has obviously decided to extend her soul searching to further back in time. Good for her, but should it be compulsory? IMHO, no.

Why would I feel bad about something I had absolutely nothing to do with?
Also during the time of the slave trade, Africa was ruled by some extremely powerful regional empires and kingdoms. Slavery was a huge part of the economy and culture. The transport of millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic absolutely could not have happened had the Africans not been complicit.
Perhaps instead of arguing over historical grievances people should focus on the fact that millions of people are still enslaved in the world, predominantly in Africa. These people would benefit most from people's outrage. No one seems interested though?

Oh look another white bait thread. No wonder people are becoming pissed off with the white savior woke agenda.

Black history is not the only history, sick of hearing it. If the woke mob had our way all white people would be paying reparations for ever and the only history taught would be black history.

Sorry nope not interested anymore its been overdone and most people I know are sick of it and its become another decisive load of crap we're all getting sick of hearing.

Every country, every faith and every colour of skin has its horrible history. It's a fact and no one born today had any influence or part in it. So give it a rest 🙄

Totally agree with this statement, and I just wish that some people, like the irritating idiot of my former manager, who is now thankfully retired, would get off their high horses about the slave trade and how EVERYONE in the UK would have had some connection to it!
I can categorically deny it, as I’ve researched my family tree, but he was insistent that nobody in the time of slavery was innocent of profiting from it. A rather weird view, given that my family were fleeing persecution themselves on one side (Hugenots), and struggling with their slave-owning Landlords in rural Ireland on the other…

I think anyone who comes from 'family wealth' can safely assume some element of historic exploitation and resource accumulation (such as hoarding of property) whether 400 or 40 years ago. This is capitalism. To not ponder upon the provenance of one's privilege seems like a massive empathy fail.

No-one got rich from fair treatment and remuneration of employees or sticking to the principle of acquiring property or goods 'for personal use only'. There is generally a point at which an individual has decided to improve their own position at the expense of another, whether through curtailing or withholding rights and reward for labour, time or services or taking advantage of conditions which allowed excessive accumulation. Sometimes through literal violence, oppression and subjugation, and more frequently, much more subtly.

To some, this represents shrewdness and astutely progressing one's interests in the context of the time, to me it illustrates a fundamental flaw in an economic structure which is intrinsically individualistic. Of course, there are instances where individuals have 'done well for themselves' through their own hard graft initially, but for this to become transferable, as passed down family wealth, there is usually an element of investment or accrual of resources, the act of which usually entails the deprivation of another some way down the line.

Why stop at this? All my ancestors were white working class people who lived hard, often short lives, working in brutal working class jobs in mills, coal mines, and factories, to make some capitalist rich. They weren’t slaves, but were physically and mentally brutalised so someone else could make money from their labour. If we’re going down this path, where’s my apology and my reparations?

Yes actually people ought to. I have been. (Unfortunately even today there are plantations that misrepresent history as being about nice architecture and gardens.)

and before you ask: my family is Jewish and came to the UK from Eastern Europe. I've been to Auschwitz. Unfortunately the Nazis completely destroyed several of the extermination camps as they left. One branch of my family was sent to Chelmno which was entirely destroyed.

you don't know history until you see it in the face. It's all too easy to start being "what about modern slavery..." and "but Africans participated". Well that's all true but it doesn't erase what Britain did.

Yeah because it's that simple.

I'm a gypsy, I'm still mistreated to this day. Where's my reparations?

If he stole a diamond ring before the murder and gave it to you, should you give the ring to the victim's next if kin?

Yup absolutely this.
if my father murders someone should I and my descendants forever go round in sack cloth apologising for it?

I listened to a very interesting podcast about a black girl bought up in a white middle class family.
She was very surprised when she visited her Jamaican roots that her ancestors were black slave traders.

I think the Trevelyan family are to be commended for their approach to this.