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

"That was the USA where slavery was written into their filthy little Constitution by the slave-owners who wrote it. That was not Britain where slavery was never established domesitically because it was incompatible with British law. Our country's Bill of Rights of 1689 guarantees equality before the law for all*

I genuinely don't understand how you can try to detach Britain from the history of slavery in the United States.

The first slaves arrived in the British colonies in the Americas in 1619. From then until 1776, hundreds of thousands of slaves were taken to the American colonies, and slavery became the basis for the colonial economic model in the South in particular (all those British tobacco, rice and indigo plantations). 90% of British exports from the American colonies came from states dependent on slave labour. In some southern states, more than half the population were slaves.

Those guys who wrote the filthy constitution considered themselves British-Americans (most if not all had British parents or grandparents).

You can blame Americans for everything that happened later, but to pretend that Britain had nothing to do with the establishment and perpetuation of slavery in the US is ridiculous.

And it's a bit rich to be so proud of an equalities act that didn't extend to the millions of people in the lands that Britain colonised.

Because the French don't tend to bang on about their Empire quite as much as the British ?

The French very cleverly erased their own empire, declaring that it was not just French but France, and the territories that eventually gained their independence saw their former colonial master smash everything that was nailed down and carry off everything that wasn't, leaving them with empty administrative buildings without so much as a chair.

Anyways, some time last evening some folks arrived on this thread like folks who arrive at the pub already bevvied up. They started ranting like so many Kevins the Teenager about how this was the Worst Thread Ever and I hate you, Mrs Patterson, you racist.

Something I remember is a documentary featuring an old boy who arrived on the Empire Windrush, and he told the story of how he was on deck as the ship tied up at Tilbury, and he noticed two things: First, how cold it was in England, and second, down on the quayside, there were white men doing manual labour, something he had never seen before.

He was perceptive enough to spot that, but some today seem to miss that point, or maybe they think those Essex dockers were only hauling ropes and driving forklifts because someone took their slaves away?

Mockers, I think it was you who kept recommending David Olusoga? Here he is in the Guardian today:

"Excusing or downplaying British racism with comparisons to the US is a bad habit with a long history. It began in 1807, with the abolition of the slave trade and picked up steam three decades later with the end of British slavery, twin events that marked the beginning of 200 years of moral posturing and historical amnesia. The Victorian readers who rightly wept over Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, conveniently forgot which nation had carried his ancestors into slavery and didn’t dwell on the fact that most of the cotton produced by American slaves like him was shipped to Liverpool."

I understand people want to refute the notion that the British started the slave trade or that they should feel personally guilty about it. That is really understandable.

But there are so many posts here from people trying to minimise or deny British culpability, as well as the extent of problems today. How is this helping?

Very interesting article here on the history of slavery in the American colonies and the US - it's from 2014 about the case for reparations and examines the long continuance of institutional and societal racism: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

In general, I think this thread shows a really strong desire for knowledge that is completely unfulfilled by our general education system. Lots of university courses now look at transatlantic history in the 18th century, but it just doesn't really exist in public consciousness - history is all about the Tudors and WW1 and 2

Bluemoon and Mockers

I am a proud Glaswegian and descendant of proud shipbuilders on the Clyde. (Pre WW1)

No way is educating people about their homelands heritage is ‘divisive’. Ignorance isn’t bliss, ignorance needs educating so everybody has a shared understanding of the past.
I don’t think present day people should feel guilty about women being burned as witches, tortured or killed for their faith, enslaved by more powerful masters, being conscripted into wars that there was no moral basis, for sending children down mines, the creation of work-houses, the transportation of minor criminals to Australia, or any number of injustices performed by our ancestors on our ancestors.
I do think we need to educate people so we disperse ignorance and make people aware of ‘might’ over ‘right’ issues and putting people before profit. Nothing divisive about that.

I genuinely don't understand how you can try to detach Britain from the history of slavery in the United States

You can’t!

isitbetter The Japanese annexed Manchuria before the second WW, and indeed China and Japan had been 'sharing' Korea (I use the term sharing loosely) for 400 years or so prior to that.

That was the USA where slavery was written into their filthy little Constitution by the slave-owners who wrote it

I wonder if this is something you actually know anything about, or if it's just the usual anti-American rant? Perhaps, if you've read into it at all, you're getting confused between the original Constitution and the separate one the Confederacy produced?

www.heritage.org/the-constitution/commentary/what-the-constitution-really-says-about-race-and-slavery

dreamingbohemian

The North American colonists did indeed call themselves British, and their Declaration of Independence included references to their rights as free-born Englishmen they thought had been denied.

Jamestown was failing and dying, until they discovered tobacco and found a more profitable way to gorw it by not paying the people they imported to cultivate it.

Jamestown was Jamestown because of King James who granted the London Company a Royal Charter to establish a settlement in his Virginia colony, named after his predecessor as English monarch. The London Company had an official licence but was a private joint stock enterprise. They were British, but it was not a govt. venture. It was Capitalism that created industrial slavery in the fields of Virginia just as it created wage-slavery in the satanic mills of England.

And the colonists, they rebelled. Didn't want to pay tax to fund the army that protected them from French encroachment. Did a deal with the French the King's enemies and called themselves patriots for so doing.

The Confederacy needed to trade with Britain to survive and received much assistance with blockade running to get its cotton to Lancashire. This was not an official policy but the UK govt recognised the Confederacy and was able to do so because Lincoln called them belligerents and not insurrectionists.

That was the UK before the second reform act, a country where just over half a million people had the vote and over 25 million did not. "The British" did not have a lot of say in the matter.

No @7ofNine I don't think BLM is woke at all. I think jumping in the bandwagon of the USA protests is woke. Because nothing here kicked it off and I'm not sure what they want the government to do exactly...

@MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing

Obama not descended from slaves. Not really an African-American, more of an American African. Famously badmouthed by Jessie Jackson for not being black enough.

I was talking about MICHELLE Obama!

But you presumed I was talking about a man....

@DGRossetti I think you got the nail on the head when you mentioned anglophone tbh. The poor of Paris are almost all from former colonies, allowed to play at being French, but never truly considered equal. Of course one cannot record a Frenchman's ethnicity, because that would allow prejudice to creep in... but one can ignore applicants from certain quartiers with impunity. Unless things have actually improved in the last fifteen years?

Well I know Section One of the United States Constitution:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Mockers, are you seriously trying to say that the American colonies were not British colonies?

Seriously?

The British government is actually in the best position to make changes in Britain.
They can also make statements about the treatment of citizens in other nations, even if it will enrage that nation's president and his backers.
Currently the British government are making a statement to the Chinese government about their treatment of some Chinese citizens, though unfortunately not about the treatment of other "Chinese citizens".

What I object to is the casual tossing around (in both senses) of terms like "England," "Britain," or "The" British.

Slavery was illegal in the British state. The British capitalists who practiced it had to go outside the country beyond its laws to do so. Eventually, maybe later than would have been better, the British state outlawed their trade and then paid them handsome compensation to free their slaves. The British State then sent the Royal Navy to stop the trade once and for all.

The British People, my people, mostly did not own slaves or have stakes in slave enterprise save for having to work for slave-owners for 'slave wages' rather than starve. And most of them were and are the descendants of feudal slaves.

Mockers, are you seriously trying to say that the American colonies were not British colonies?

Are you seriously asking the question?

British North America was an officially sanctioned venture, but as events proved all too well, it was beyond the writ of the parliament in Westminster to control it, de facto and ultimately de jure.

Mockers it appears that, like so many, you've taken the "three fifths" bit, and without any real understanding interpreted it as something totally contrary to what the whole thing actually said

You might want to read the piece I linked - it really is illuminating

If it's in the American constitution then it's no longer British but American or have I lost the train of thought here ?

Slavery was illegal in the British state. The British capitalists who practiced it had to go outside the country beyond its laws to do so. Eventually, maybe later than would have been better, the British state outlawed their trade and then paid them handsome compensation to free their slaves. The British State then sent the Royal Navy to stop the trade once and for all.

Wow. That is some seriously whitewashed history you have there.

The main thing I am taking away from this thread is that the gap between how Brits see themselves and how the rest of the world sees them is astronomical.

I remember Gladstone and the Alabama ship incident from A-level history. He was trying to do the right thing after a blunder.

For the avoidance of doubt:

Slavery Bad
Always
No Exceptions
This is not a piece of presentist moralising. It is a Lesson of History. Societies built on slavery become decadent and collapse.
Pythagorian Greek Slavery Bad
Roman Slavery Bad
English Feudal Slavery Bad
Transatlatic Slavery Bad
Arab Slavery Bad
Modern Slavery, in all its forms, Bad

Off for a lie down now.

@7ofNine Japan colonised rather large parts of China (Manchuria etc). Reports of the activities of some people there were so shocking and deplorable I stopped reading. Many atrocities were committed, not all by Japanese invaders. (See Korea too) do you mean during WW2? Because I wouldn’t class that as colonisation any more than I would say the Germans colonised France.

You might want to do a bit of reading before you suggest Japan never really colonized anyone around any Korean people. The anger and resentment hasn't faded much. People in China would generally describe what happened in Manchuria as colonization too.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule

Mockers
The reason your points are being ignored is because they don't fit the narrative. This is the narrative, it is on explicit display in post after post:

It is not coincidental that a thread about slavery which seeks to redefine its meaning in such a way as to edit out Empires and focus exclusively on England emerges at this point. The narrative goes like this. England (Scotland is edited out) is the architect of the slave trade, this has conferred centuries of collective guilt which needs to be atoned. The method of atonement isn't clear, but it involves deconstruction. Of what and by whom remains elusive. Reparations have been suggested. Details remain elusive. But what is required above all else is national shame. And the trigger for this national shame is an event on another continent. Attempts to point out the myriad inconsistencies, historical inaccuracies and Newspeak dictionary redefinitions are dismissed. When descendants of those who toiled and died in the Satanic Mills of the Industrial Revolution object to being cast in the role of Major Robert Clive, they are met with slogans. There is an umbilical cord of guilt which links every white Brit with George Floyd's murder in Minnesota. What, I wonder, is the aim of this? How will the aim be achieved? Cui bono?

1833 end of British slavery?

End of slavery in USA around 1865