The English started the slave trade

[Annamaria14]

I just saw a black American woman post online,

"The English started the slave trade. They caused all our problems, they hurt generations of people. I will never set foot in that country".

What do you think? I felt a bit guilty, because the English did cause a lot of problems around the world. Have we learned from our past. How can we do better in the future

@BovaryX

and say that England, just England has decided that we recognise thenegative parts of the

That would be ludicrous. Are you unaware of the significant role of Scotland in the UK's imperial past?

I wrote that clumsily - what I meant was that each country has to own their own role - as opposed to saying well, we weren't th worst or we didn't start it.

That would be ludicrous. Are you unaware of the significant role of Scotland in the UK's imperial past? Many people of West Indian origin have Scottish surnames, those of the owners of the plantations on which their ancestors were slaves.

Scotland had a better education system than England in the past

There was of course another Atlantic slave trade, to Brazil. It lasted from the 16th to the mid-19th century. The last period, 1815-1851, was a period of illegal trafficking, which was finally suppressed by the British Royal Navy.

I mean it provided free education to all children from as early as the 17th century

Yes as I said above Scotland played a huge role too. there is a very good series from BBC Scotland addicted to pleasure which I think is on youtube and one episode is about the sugar trade and who that wealth built many of the Scottish mansions back int he day.

Yes, sirfred, that is exactly it. It is arguably racist to make individuals take responsibility for what people at the top in the country in which they now live did in the past.

@sirfredfredgeorge

I think it is a normal, and maybe a healthy reaction to feel ashamed of what your ancestors have done to other people.

No, it's a peculiarly Nationalistic viewpoint that is not great, basically by saying that you are more part of your "ancestors" than part of all the people who live today specifically promotes the idea that nations are different and othering is okay and fine.

That poses a lot of questions!

Some past acts happened under the flag of nationalism.

Nationalism still exists as a unifying force in many places. It is seen as a good, protective thing - criticising nationalism is seen as a particular line of thought from wealthier countries who benefitted from it in the past but realise the implication of it now - thus preventing those countries from moving forward by the very means used by others.

It is much more nuanced than that, particularly in countries that fought for their independence aginst bigger ones. sometimes nationalism is an attempt to establish national pride in prohibited languages/religions/culture.

Look at Poland, for example.

It has been argued that everyone currently in the UK is directly benefiting from the wealth generated during 18th and 19th century colonialism. Those who argue that the beneficiaries of this were the aristocracy, have been told that even if their forebears were toiling in the Satanic Mills, they are equally guilty. If you believe in collective guilt, as has already been pointed out, this is a blood libel. If you believe that everyone living in the UK is a beneficiary, through the privilege of living in the UK, then the guilt falls on every citizen. Irrespective of ethnicity. How do those posters who believe this suggest that happens?

Can the posters who believe in collective guilt answer the questions I raised above?

One African tribe enslaves another African tribe and sells them on.
All pretty dirty business. Humans can be vile.

Modern slavery...people dying in the back of refrigerated lorries...cockle pickers drowning....sex workers trafficked......all of these lives matter.

I wouldn't bother with a march. A whole lot of virtue signalling going on and covid19 transmission to boot. Perhaps we should all try NOT to be arses, generally? (Like that fucker on the M4 50mph zone who thinks it is okay to drive like a slalom skiier at 80mph....f*ck off and stay at home- we did fine without you on the roads for 8 weeks)

@serenada That's a real post of hope. I get the need for acknowledgment and action but when you say you could feel a difference in the way people felt after, would you say there had been forgiveness. I think in order to truly move on together, there has to be forgiveness of the perpetrators.

Great post serenada

I don't know why it's so hard for people to understand that nothing can be put right until there is a genuine reckoning with the past.

As you say, little gestures can go a long way. Apologies. Returning artifacts. Scholarships. Memorials. Reform the school curriculum.

There are real-life examples, notably what Germany has tried to do since the Holocaust. Right now you see Confederate memorials being torn down all over the US.

Does this make up for those historical atrocities? Of course not, but it at least shows an acknowledgement of responsibility and contrition. It also goes a long way to diminishing the legitimacy of the ideas that enabled those atrocities in the first place.

How can you even begin to eliminate racism in modern Britain if your reaction to Britain's role in the slave trade is 'everyone did it', 'it was a long time ago', we did great things too'?

*And if we're going to beat ourselves up about the slave trade what about what we did in India? How about Ireland? What about us exporting tons of food out of the country while a million people died unnecessarily?

British people still benefit from all of this. If they could at least stand up and fight for those still impacted that would be something*

What do you want to do? Invade Minneapolis? I don't think we do that any more - because we have moved on!

England only ever had one colony, Newfoundland founded in 1583. (Although you could also make cases for Wales and Ireland.)

The first British settlement in North America was Jamestown, named after James I/VI, the Scottish king of Great Britain.

Slavery was the foundation of one small corner of the Britsh Empire in the Carribbean. You could find some bonded labour in Africa and Asia, but the empire was also responsible for freeing many slaves and ending slave trading in East Africa, matrimonial bondage in India and cannibalism in New Guinea and the Pacific.

Racism is structural. In Britain all Afro-Carribbeans are victims but not all whites are oppressors and some Afro-Carribbeans oppress their own.

Take the case of Damilola Taylor, a black British boy with African parents who loved school and loved to read. He would stop off on his way home from school at the public library to find new books to enjoy.

This made him enemies among the local bad boys who called him a 'coconut,' tormented and bullied him and eventually killed him. Damilola was a victim of racism.

Many people of West Indian origin have Scottish surnames, those of the owners of the plantations on which their ancestors were slaves

Excellent point. Scotland played a prominent role in Britain's colonial past.

A part I am sure they downplay @BovaryX. I wouldn't think it would suit that narrative of politicians such as Nicola Sturgeon. Easy to always blame the English as the oppressors

The United Kingdom came about because of a failed Scottish imperialist venture in Panama that bankrupted the Edinburgh parliament.

I don't see anyone believing in 'collective guilt'

To say a country should acknowledge its responsibility for historical atrocities is not saying every individual person in that country should feel personally guilty.

Also, nice job using an offensive and anti-Semitic phrase like blood libel in a completely inappropriate way.

Slavery was the foundation of one small corner of the Britsh Empire in the Carribbean

And yet, Britain was responsible for at least 25% of the transatlantic slave trade. Why was that then?

The English were the victims of the Barbary Slave trade for centuries. Not just those who sailed to the Mediterranean either; the pirates came to the British isles and once famously took an entire village from Southern Ireland. The Barbary slavers took sub Saharan Africans too, and continued taking after the trans Atlantic slave trade had ceased. Read Giles Milton, White Gold for more.

After Britain banned slave trading the Royal Navy mounted anti-slavery patrols for a century.

So tell your friend: the English didn’t invent it, They were victims of it, they banned it long before the African Chiefs stopped involvement in it, or the Americans, or the North Africans; they also did far more than any country to shut it down.

Blood libel is entirely relevant to the bonkers far-left anti-imperialist narrative pedalled by the likes of Jackie Walker who accused jews of being the chief financiers of the slave trade as her justification for not honouring Holocaust Memorial Day.

The sense I use it in is exclusively that of the bibical reference to the sins of the fathers.

I think there is a very curious editing going on. Scotland gets edited out, despite its pivotal role in the UK's imperial past. Collective guilt is a blood libel, but many posters blithely promote it. If every UK citizen is a beneficiary of the UK's imperial past, then all are guilty. That includes British citizens whose ancestors were subjects of British imperialism.

Oh Dear, KS3 Geography:

Because India, Australia, East Africa etc aren't transatlantic destinations.

The Atlantic slave trade was real and monstrous. The suggestion was that it was because slavery was "The Foundation of the British Empire." In the case of the vast majority of the empire, this is patently false.

The slave trade was barbaric across all ages. What about the thousands upon thousands shipped off to Rome 2000 years ago or the Barbary slaves captured by Ottoman traders or the modern filipino housemaids all but incarcerated in the homes of wealthy Saudis.

The crime of slavery has poisoned humankind for thousands or years and across almost all cultures.

@dreamingbohemian

Have you not read the posts on here which clearly state that UK citizens alive today are beneficiaries of its Imperial past and complicit in it? Those whose forebears were toiling in Satanic Mills are guilty? Collective guilt is a belief in the sins of the forefathers. This thread is saturated with that idea.

If the suggestion here is one from the USA that Britian is in some way to blame for American slavery as codified in their sanctified Constitution, I suggest a quick look at the history of slavery in Canada, which had died out even before empire slavery was banned in 1833 because of the application of English law, habeus corpus, manumission and numerous examples of English common law that stymied the attempts of loyalist refugees from south of the border to bring their slaves north and keep them.

When Sitting Bull came north, he was visited by the Constable and warned that should he or his men take any local cattle, he would have to pay a fine.

That is British Civilisation.