STILL making money from slavery?

[4plusthehound]

AIBU here?

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/04/british-slave-owners-family-apologise-reparations-trevelyans

It seems so craven

Perhaps the family have been careless with the 30 million over the years in their left wing pursuits and are trying to recoup some of it?

I think @RosaDeInvierno 's point is a fair one. The condition of people today, including location, status and wealth, is to varying extents due to the past. What one does when acknowledging this is something I am not sure about. What's the interplay between how serious something was (to us now?), how long ago it was and so on? Is a restorative act a one off, or to be repeated through the generations? Was the putting something right centuries ago just not good enough?

As someone living in the UK now, with no UK roots, I find some of the hangups over empire, colonialism and slavery interesting and being fed to an extent by trends in the USA. There are still major land empires (I just got to four or five on my fingers) and two of those have extensive global economic tentacles. There's still slavery in different forms. While Trevelyanising things I hope we ALSO address what those mean today.

People don’t get paid for documentaries in the UK, unless they are presenting them. Ordinary folk might get some out of pocket expenses for loss of earnings, but not much.

The other way to look at this is another voice added to the discussion, and one supporting reparations but on the side usually not keen. It’s a good thing, IMO.

Greene King did something similar back in 2020

They apologised for their links to the slave trade (www.bighospitality.co.uk/Article/2020/06/18/Pub-group-Greene-King-apologises-for-links-with-slave-trade-black-lives-matter) and they also pledged to give money to charities because of the money that was given to them when slavery was abolished.

Again, I think it's all very well and noble, but there's so much emphasis on apologising for the past without any mention whatsoever of the fact that slavery still bloody well goes on. Human trafficking, sex trafficking, sweatshops, drug mules, the list goes on.

@4plusthehound the article says nearer £2.7m, not £30m

I find some of the hangups over empire, colonialism and slavery interesting and being fed to an extent by trends in the USA.

In a way I agree with this and in a way I don't. Our UK history is really grim if we really start to look at it. I only realized it when I went travelling in my 20s. We beat, starved, raped and stole. It was institutional. There is now way around this.

And we are still a relevant country because of the wealth that we accrued that way.

So this journalist, who gained so much from dreadful ancestors continuing to gain in a (cynical?) jump on a sobering moment of reckoning is unsavory.

Only thing that’s unreasonable here are people that have had nothing to do with the slave trade apologising and paying anything out. Not our circus, not our place to apologise or pay. Are the families that sold their own people in Africa into slavery apologising and paying reparations too? If not, why not?

Yes it does @roarfeckingroarr but the is a Forbes article that plays with what that amount would mean in todays money.

How much did Mr. Darcy have? 😁

@ShimmeringShirts Only thing that’s unreasonable here are people that have had nothing to do with the slave trade apologising and paying anything out.
But - the point is they/we still benefit from it. Families like this journalist still benefit to this day from the legacy of having the right to another's labour free of charge and probably treating them inhumanly for good measure.

Are the families that sold their own people in Africa into slavery apologising and paying reparations too? If not, why not?

Surely that is their problem to sort out? Who knows - maybe it is a national discussion in some countries. I would love to know actually!

Lols

And that slavery is not the only thing that those with inherited wealth benefit from. Plenty of people in the UK contributed to that also, plenty of miners dying down mines and children getting crushed in crude machinery etc, it’s the working classes who made their money for them. Everyone who wasn’t wealthy and connected, was part of the system they took advantage of. For some reason the focus and self flagellation is always around the AST though.

This too. Why don’t we ever hear about apologies from them? And why don’t they ever go after the slave trade in the other direction - Arab empires? Actually I know that one, that’s because they routinely and barbarically sterilised/castrated all their slaves, en route to their lands, so that they’d never be able to reproduce. There’s no one left there to make a fuss…

@4plusthehound their ancestors fortune may have been made by the slavery business, but future generations are the ones that have put the work into growing the fortune and using it in vastly different ways. It’s a bit disingenuous to think that someone is rich and benefiting because a family member a century ago was in the slave trade. Yes it can absolutely be a contributing factor but it will not be the only factor and it’s rather crass to flog newer generations for a previous generations sins.

I think the government themselves should be the ones held accountable, but again that gets into a very grey area of past/present generations taking responsibility.

This issue is one of the very few where we seem to refuse to let go of the past. There have been many atrocities across the world, the most cliche being that we do not still continue to blame the citizens of Germany for the horrors of the holocaust. They rightly are still continuing to prosecute those that have been found to have committed those horrors but worldwide we aren’t calling for the descendants of those people to pay reparations to the descendants of Jewish people who had their businesses, homes and lives ripped away. We accept it was an entirely horrific and non repeatable event that took place in the world, which is the same for slavery.

I would absolutely get behind calling for apologies and reparations for those who are in modern day slavery however - that is a current event we can take responsibility and action for.

Yes - wealth was created by and large by the right to free or very cheap labour.

We have come so far!

This thread is confusing. Not the OP but the general attitude towards the discussion of the transatlantic slave trade? There are lots of atrocities that happened in the past that we still acknowledge today, teach in schools etc, why is a problem when it comes to the transatlantic slave trade?

@JenniferBarkley This quote from a Trevelyan family member is absolutely priceless:
“Dower added: ‘I was more than shocked, I was badly shaken. I was under the impression that I came from a benevolent, public service facing family.’”

Exactly. Slavery began 50,000 years ago, when we became clever enough to plan such things. And it has never stopped. There are probably sex workers in your town who’ve been trafficked here. Yes, Europeans enslaved Africans, but it was their fellow Africans who sold them to the traders. They also sold them to the Arab world. In fact, the Arabs were responsible for more slavery than Europeans. Also, Africans enslaved Europeans - look up the ‘Barbary pirates’! My ancestors certainly didn’t take part, nor did they benefit. Like most Brits, I am descended from people who spent their lives shivering in slums and slaving in factories and mills.

There seems to be this idea that Europeans are uniquely guilty of slavery and colonialism. That, I’m afraid, is nonsense. The history of humanity IS the history of slavery and empire. Aztecs, Mughals, Byzantines, Incas, Zulus, Mongolians, Arabs...all of them built empires and conquered and enslaved their neighbours. The woke movement, which began with good intentions, is becoming a money-making scam.

Well at least ( hopefully) those enslaved in the Tropics didn’t suffer the same fate as the Irish ‘ and you stole Trevelyan’s corn so your babe could see the morn now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay’ a fate worst than death/enslavement 👍🏿☘️

Woah. The Trevelyans and their ilk treated Ireland appallingly but there is absolutely no need for that.

Thread doesn't seem confusing to me WeDontTalk... it is wide ranging and generally thoughtful. In a forum where anyone can post anything it seems to have shuffled along pretty well, often discussing transatlantic slavery, which IS taught and discussed in schools. These are topics that are more to the fore in English speaking places. I have lived a lot of my life in Spain and a quarter of my heritage is Spanish and, while not ignored, the extent and tone of debate is very different.

If it wasn't for the Asiento...

Jennifer B - re Trevelyans - ‘appallingly’ what an understatement - there is an absolute ‘need’ for truth however harsh and please stop with the censorship 👍🏿☘️

I think you have misunderstood eveoha @JenniferBarkley

To say it was worse than slavery is ridiculous and offensive. There doesn't need to be a hierarchy of awfulness.

Not so fast @ShimmeringShirts
but future generations are the ones that have put the work into growing the fortune and using it in vastly different ways. It’s a bit disingenuous to think that someone is rich and benefiting because a family member a century ago was in the slave trade.

Of course you can make a link between wealth gathered in the past, and a good societal position today. The Royals, landed gentry and their progeny by and large do well. Jeff Bezos will have well established, well housed, and well fed great (x6/7) grandchildren in the future. The Trevelyans got theirs from slavery. But they also had the poor and indentured servants.

the government themselves should be the ones held accountable

Agreed - but Trevelyan should start that campaign not a self serving self, marvelous person campaign.

the most cliche being that we do not still continue to blame the citizens of Germany for the horrors of the holocaust. They rightly are still continuing to prosecute those that have been found to have committed those horrors but worldwide we aren’t calling for the descendants of those people to pay reparations to the descendants of Jewish people who had their businesses, homes and lives ripped away.

The war lasted (approximately) from 1938/9 to 1945. The first recorded slave arriving to the UK was late 1500s. Three hundred years later it stopped. You cannot compare the two.

worldwide we aren’t calling for the descendants of those people to pay reparations to the descendants of Jewish people who had their businesses, homes and lives ripped away. We accept it was a it was an entirely horrific and non repeatable event that took place in the world, which is the same for slavery.which is the same for slavery.

This is utterly wrong - ask any Israeli. They do indeed call for all wealth to be restored.They have government branches dedicated to it. Well funded too. They do not accept that it was an entirely horrific and non repeatable event that took place in the world, AT ALL and rightly so.
which is the same for slavery. Except slavery is alive and well but has been rebranded.

Do you think? I'm hoping so, because she seems to be saying that what was done in Ireland (and again, I'm Irish) was worse than slavery. Which isn't the best point to make in all of this.

More than happy to be corrected though.