EMPIRE- did you know this history?

Saying British imperial slavery was “just the same as any other slavery” is a bit like saying a hurricane is “just windy weather.” Technically, yes, but you’re missing the entire point.

The transatlantic system Britain helped build was uniquely brutal: the Middle Passage, hereditary slavery, racial dehumanisation written into law, families torn apart, forced labour, the bodies of black women used by slave owners to grow their own slaves, all on an industrial scale – the whole package. This wasn’t some mild historical footnote.

And no, slavery didn’t end because people suddenly grew halos. Black abolitionists–men and women–spent years fighting, resisting, writing, revolting, and pushing themselves into a political conversation that often wanted nothing to do with them. Meanwhile, plenty of white reformers campaigned for equality for themselves (many white women) while happily benefiting from a world where Black people were treated as less than human. To add insult to injury white slave owners were paid for the inconvenience of freeing the enslaved. Many slaves were not even freed straight away thanks to the sleight of hand that allowed slavery to be replaced by the 'Apprenticeship' system. This allowed the former slave owner to keep a form of slavery a few years more. The real kicker here is that slave owners, not the enslaved were compensated for the ending of slavery. The loan it took out to pay them was only finally paid back in 2015!

Post-slavery was not all roses either. In some earlier slave systems, once freed you could work your way up, even become skilled or wealthy. Not in the British model. This one was deliberately built on racial hierarchy (easy when your skin marks you as different), and the legacy of that design is still obvious today.
So no – British slavery was not “the same.” It was its own uniquely destructive system, with consequences that didn’t magically disappear because Parliament finally caught up with basic humanity.

It important to remember who wrote much of the history that is written...

Exactly. And this issue is precisely why the collective guilt and, controversially, reparations, gains no traction with the working class. It's only three, four generations ago that the majority of people in this country had a landed gentry boot on their own neck, never mind what they were doing overseas. Yes, they weren't in literal chains. But so what?

Its the same old story. Middle class do gooders falling over themselves to virtue signal. I gave up my National Trust membership a while ago. I got tired of shoving my nose up against the window of old money (who still won't pay their fair fucking share) and mixing with the aforementioned do gooders in the cafes. 😬

@Loadsapandas, people are discussing the David Olusoga tv series, though, whose chief focus is on slavery and the oppression of indigenous peoples.

Hear hear!
I read Drax of Drax Hall recently with a foreword by David Olusoga, all about the history of one family (the Drax family obvs) and how they pretty much invented chattel slavery in Barbados. Definitely old and definitely monied , the current ‘scion’ of the family was the richest MP in the House of Commons until he got booted out in the last GE. He still owns land there and is quibbling with the Barbadian government about the price of the land he owns which they want to buy done of for social housing…. even for that goal, Drax refused to drop the price 🙄

The shadows of slavery and the impact of the British empire are still being felt - certainly on the island of Barbados anyways.

Whilst not as abhorrent as slavery, building staggering wealth on the backs of miners and steel workers is also something that should draw raised eyebrows. The workers were paid a pittance and worked under awful conditions.

It’s interesting some people have jumped to slavery, do you all realise that the British Empire was huge and it could be argued, only ended in 1997 when we gave back Hong Kong.

We still have 14 overseas territories. HK wasn't the last.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories

Every historian has bias of some sort. Good historiography makes you aware of the bias. It shoukd be part of any analysis of history - why is this being told now, why is it being done this way, what has been left out or ignored? History is about the present- there are fashions in what gets studied at history as much as any other subject, and that tells us about current society as much as anything in the past.

I can't remember when I learnt about the slave trade at school, whether it was part of GCSE (Industrial revolution) or before then. I was aware of it before I covered it at school - my father's first job in the '60s was on a farm owned by a family who had made their money in Carribean plantations a couple of centuries earlier.

I was at the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich yesterday, which had a lot about slavery (the triangular trade was very reliant on shipping.) Amsterdam museums have a lot about the VOC, particularly the Tropenmuseum (museum of the tropics, I guess, my Dutch isn't great,) which went into a lot of history about the Dutch in Suriname and Batavia (as it then was) and so on, which i didn't know about (despite having a history degree.) I don't know how much they cover st school in NL. I know some of my German colleagues felt hugely guilty about the Third Reich after what they covered in school, yet in most cases their grandparents had been no more than children, and parents weren't involved at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed bingeing a few episodes last night. I got hooked on Dr David Olusoga from the first series of a House in Time and everything he does is fascinating and really engaging.

www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-end-of-the-british-empire-after-the-second-world-war

I am ethnically Indian and no fan of the British Empire. I would however note that the British Empire was the first empire ever to abolish slavery and to employ significant military force to stop slavery taking place. Slavery survived in many countries into the 20th Century and there are still versions of it around today.

It’s interesting some people have jumped to slavery, do you all realise that the British Empire was huge and it could be argued, only ended in 1997 when we gave back Hong Kong.

Even without that, many colonies only gained independence in the 1960s-1980s. The Windrush generation mainly travelled on British passports because they were British at the time. The British Caribbean didn’t actually have autonomy - it was a British colony.

I’m not taking anything away from the horrors of slavery and British involvement in the not just the trade but also the mechanisms of enslaving human beings, but the Empire and exploitation/oppression of people spans a much greater time and geographic expanse than it portrays.

Slavery was just 1 horrendous aspect…

I did history gcse in 1993 and we only did WW1 and WW2 and a bit of Henry VIII. It was still the attitude that history was only the bits where the British were the good guys.

everything I’ve learned since has been my own reading.

The Koreans have a 1600 year history of slavery. The Chinese frankly continue theirs today. The Romans were at it, the Middle East, the many African countries…

Humans don’t live harmoniously together, they stick to their tribes and generally enslave or exploit the ‘others’.

Thanks for the recommendation OP. I’ll look it up.

Henry VIII, done properly, is Brexit and the dismantling of the welfare state into royal possession.

I did my dissertation on Haiti, this was 30 years ago and the books in library hadn’t been touched since the 1970’s. Now everyone is interested and it’s a hot topic. For me one of the stand out parts of the TAST was that the Catholic colonies ‘allowed’ slaves to marry and believe that they would go to heaven, where the Protestants did not and taught them that they were barred from heaven as ‘beasts’. The whole thing is wild and no TV program will ever manage to convey the absolute horror of it all.

We essentially only ever did the world wars. T’was truly dull.

It’s difficult to assess tone in a brief post, @OneBookTooMany- I’m not sure of the point you’re making?

Niall Ferguson once made the point that one of the better things about the British Empire was that it wasn’t the French Empire.

Haiti is such a poor country because they were paying reparations to the French for ending slavery well into the second half of the 20th century, I believe.

Poor cow. I wonder if her black counterpart in Africa would have felt the same if she had one white child in her class.

I think everyone realises that empire made the UK wealthy. This really isn't news. Your analysis is very simplistic though. The transfer of wealth was not all one way. Power and financial networks were complex and often co-dependant. But the idea tjat some countries, organisations and individuals have more power in the market is not rocket science and isn't just a result of the british empire either.

I don't feel angry at current Britons. I am aware other Europeans were colonialists too. And also I know history is very complex. Irish people participated in Empire and have things to be ashamed of there themselves. Also, criticising colonialism doesn't mean ignoring all the other forms of exploitation, many continuing to this day. But if we try to understand colonialism properly, it helps us understand the present. If we don't know why things are the way they are, we can't really fix them. History is the present as well as the past, and that's why it matters that we are honest and objective about it, as best we can be.

No I didn't. I didn't want to get into a political discussion/argument. I think I know what he meant, as you probably do.

I'm not British but from a former colony which sees the British rule as a dark and brutal thing. I don't think anyone from any former empire should be made apologise or feel guilty for the sins of their fathers. I do however feel education is really lacking among British people. Not just history which to be fair is vast, but contemporary knowledge, as in what is or is not part of the commonwealth. What I think people don't get is if you know the horrors your people went through gaining independence and then meet someone who assumes you are still part of Britain it is extremely hurtful and disrespectful. That other person may simply be uneducated but it comes across as they are racist or bigoted and is really damaging to international relationships.

My ancestors were part of the VOC. I studied colonial history for my degree. When the British gave them compensation for their lost ‘chattels’, they endowed x 2 schools and a university as the ones who were left were mega evangelical Christians. No money has made it into the twenty first century thank God. The educational institutions are still going though!
The Dutch behaved appallingly and still do in lots of places, it is wrong to think it was just the British doing the exploiting. If anyone thinks that global trade and slavery are over, they’re wrong. It’s happening right now. Let’s concentrate on that.