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

It must be a wind-up.

The Japanese coming to terms with their war guilt?

I'll just pop out and tell the death railway survivors and the Korean Comfort Women.

@GrumpyHoonMain well it'll seem a bit flat if they're forced to apologise won't it?
And the general public can't apologise cause it's not really been anything to do with us..

Breaking News: Baghdad comes to Bristol. Colston has Fallen:

Weird tingle down my spine ... I can recall the Berlin Wall falling, and wondering what it must be like to be there.

Group of us once put a Madonna conical bra on Lady Godiva in Coventry.

Not quite the same.

We did the French Revolution onwards, Irish history and British politics 19 C onwards for A level syllabus.

There was a series on Netflix called Ministerio del tiempo (Ministry of Time) www.rtve.es/television/ministerio-del-tiempo/

The premise is a portal (stay with me!) has been found that leads to some sort of time warp in the Government ministries. The Spanish government has to manage this portal and others around th world so that history is not changed. (please - stay with me). Several characters are tasked to do this.

In teh first episode we meet a young working class nurse who id devastated at the mess of Spain after the 2008 crisis. He has lost his identity and is struggling. we see Spain through his eyes, then he meets a young women from supple class 19th century Barcelons, the first women to attend university and we experience the world from her view. Lastly, we meet a cavalier, 14th century King and country and church soldier and see his confusion and puzzlement at modern day life. Later characters include a 70s cop nicknamed 'Serpico' who and we see 1970s Madrid, corruption, poverty, etc.

As each episode unfolds we go back in time to key moments in Spanish history and see the history through the eyes of these characters - a 19th woman, a tradionalist, a modernist.

It covers teh expulsion of the Jews, colonisation of South America, Franco and film censorship, gay rights, roles of women, the arts - there is a great episode where Velaquez (who wanders around aimlessly) wants to meet Picasso as the only other great artist except Goya of interest and we learn all about their styles of work and influence at the time.

It is incredibly naff in parts but crucially it brings together these opposing historical viewpoints against a background of how lives were lived and essentially gives the viewer a history lesson.

I know Blackadder, Horrible Histories, etc have tried to do something similar but, where this works is in providing up to date history lessons for people. We could do a lot worse.

No wonder the mental health of our young people is so bad in this country - they are taught from a young age to be thoroughly ashamed of their heritage. Look at what the Romans did to us, look at what the Vikings did to us, look at what the Normans did to us - GENOCIDE in the North of England, people had to resort to cannibalism. Look what the Spanish did in South America! Are the Danish ashamed of what their ancestors did? Are the French ashamed? Are the Spanish ashamed? Are the Portuguese ashamed? If you don't know about it, please read up about the Harrying of the North. The power in this country is still with these same families! The ordinary people of this country have been treated appallingly by the ruling classes for generations and now we have everyone hating us for oppressing them. The PORTUGUESE started the transatlantic slave trade, African tribal leaders themselves sold their own people! Then we and other countries got in on it because it was hundreds of years ago and the world was a different, brutal place! Stop blaming us! I have ancestors who died in the workhouses, the ruling classes treated people like animals!! A lot of what I believe black people think is institutional racism in the UK is actually a class issue - most ordinary people can't get to the very top rungs of our society either because we are the wrong social class!

@DGRossetti

Weird tingle down my spine ... I can recall the Berlin Wall falling, and wondering what it must be like to be there.

I was there a couple of months afterwards. A city still stuck in history then. Very strange environment and very disorientating.

But it certainly brought history alive to me - travelling on through EEurope and talking to people, getting a sense of the terrain and cultures, you see how things happen. You also get a sense of the engagement people have with their environment and culture and the role it plays.

I would really support more physical trips in history - places like Berlin, Moscow, Belfast, Sarajevo, Auschwitz - there is a very different reality getting on a train in Amsterdam that has Moscow as its destination - it is small things like that bring home the reality of WW! and WW2 to you.

My Godfathers mother (and her sister) were kicked out of Spain in the 1930s. They were both advocates (lawyers) and Basque to boot. Her eldest son went back in the1960s to protests and got himself arrested and deported. My DF used to chat to her in the weirdest mix of Italians dialects, bits of Spanish, and English.

I remember the first family holiday to Spain, when I was nine. Got off the plane at Malaga with Guardia Civil with machine guns on either side of the steps.

Bienvenidos.

...Good old Caudillo

"Yes, Manuel, Rat! You have rats in Spain, or did Franco have them all shot?"

George Washington and William Samuel Johnson , to mention just two of the founding fathers of the USA were slave owners. Slavery was outlawed by parliament long before it was in America. People of this country were appalled at the segregation of black GI's during the war. The KKK is an American organisation. The Americans need to look at themselves.

No wonder the mental health of our young people is so bad in this country - they are taught from a young age to be thoroughly ashamed of their heritage

Wow - I know several people, young and old, with mental health issues. None attribute it to being taught to be ashamed of their heritage.

In fact, I don't know anybody personally who is ashamed of their heritage - but know many who can recognise 'shameful episodes' in British history, and in world history. Being able to analyse critically represents healthy minds that can distinguish between good and bad.

Slavery was outlawed by the Czar in Russia before it was in the USA.

Slavery was outlawed by the Czar in Russia before it was in the USA.
serfdom ....

Lucky old Russian peasants in 1863. I'm sure they appreciated the nuance.

Wasn't it just the rich who had slaves?

I think it's ridiculous that anyone should feel guilty for their ancestors' parts in the slave trade. After all, seeing people of a different colour as subhuman, isn't hereditary, is it?

It's nice to be able to have a discussion about this. Thanks, op

@changiemyname

I was friends with a Swedish guy I met in Spain. His mother was Catalan and as soon as she could, left home to escape the father. She studied in Sweden and never came back. This gut was trying figure out teh family history and it turned out his grandfather had been very close to Franco and in return was given lots of real estate on one of the boulevards in central BCN. I visited his home there and remember seeing a fantastic collection of original art works in the rooms.

History lives on in families - it is far more bloody, confusing, complex and interesting outside of textbooks and it is essentially teh story of people and their lives.

I'm watching the Odessa File now - film is also an incredibly powerful way. I have used La Haine in classrooms to talk about the partition of Africa and the ME conflict.

Lots of good stuff out there.

GG 'The Third Man with Orson Welles is also a brilliant way to convey the sense of chaos and social breakdown post war Europe experienced.

Obviously not to condone.

The slave trade had been running in west Africa before the Europeans took it up.

The Africans stole people and enslaved them. How else were they obtained?

Ancient Egypt had slaves.

A good film: Amma Asante's "A United Kingdom," the true story of Seretse Kama and Ruth Williams, a love story about overcoming racial prejudice on both sides.

Wasn't just the rich who had slaves?

For the most part yes but there is a reason we have so many statues of men like Coulson in our cities. They made fortunes off slavery and then reinvested it in the UK, building things like schools/giving to universities/hospitals so the whole country benefited.

Indentured service mustn't be ignored when looking at slave labour:

Four hundred years ago all manner of children, teenagers, and young men and women, mainly from the poorest families, were sent, often against their will, to board ships leaving from Bristol across the Irish Sea, and into the Atlantic Ocean.They were sent to meet the growing demand for cheap labour in Britain’s newly created colonies in North America.From 1610 to American independence in 1776, half a million people left Britain for North America.Some were political and religious dissenters, like the Puritans, Quakers and the Irish and Scottish Presbyterians. And some were convicts, sent by the British government to clear out its overcrowded prisons.But around half - that’s a quarter of a million - were indentured servants.And most were sent against their will

In April 1775, two days after the American War of Independence began, a notice appeared in the Virginia Gazette offering rewards for the return of 10 runaways. Two were "Negro slaves", but the other eight were white servants, including Thomas Pearce, a 20-year-old Bristol joiner, and William Webster, a middle-aged Scottish brick-maker. Whether they were ever found remains a mystery; almost nothing is known about them but their names. But their irate master was to become very famous indeed, for the man pursuing his absconding servants was called George Washington.Pearce and Webster were indentured servants, the kind of people often ignored in patriotic accounts of colonial America. In the 17th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of men, women and children lived as ill-paid, ill-treated chattels, bound in servitude to their colonial masters

The Indian indenture system was a system of indenture, a form of debt bondage, by which 3.5 million Indians were transported to various colonies of European powers to provide labour for the (mainly sugar) plantations. It started from the end of slavery in 1833 and continued until 1920

I remember when Mandela came out of prison. Imagine if he's stood there, stamped his feet and wailed, "I'm not moving from this spot until you all apologise!"

I was appalled when he said people should continue to sing the old Nazi anthem alongside Nkosi sikelel' Afrika, but when I saw the black Springbok captain lift the World Cup, I realised that Madiba was right and I was wrong.