Britain without the slave trade?

[FancyFanny]

There's lots of talk of how the Britain's wealth was a result of the slave trade an colonialism and how we should all be trying to pay that back and rectify it some how.

I just wondered what people think Britain would be like today if those things had never happened?

You thought it would be a good idea to use dogs as an analogy to describe Black MNetters?

I left the thread and just came back to see this 😣 too.

They can’t help themselves. They always reveal their true colours eventually. It’s a sickness.

Are you not familiar with the expression "On the internet, no one knows you are a dog?". That's how I meant it. Because on MN there is always complete disbelief that anyone is what they claim to be.

I am not white.

Hi, OP. How about posing this question on black mumsnet?

Haven't rtft, so probably already mentioned, but there were a lot of Irish slaves in Iceand at one point! They were taken when the Vikings went raiding.

I disagree with this. Britain finally made the right decision. It isn’t to be applauded, it’s something that finally stopped something that never should have happened. I don’t think I can feel proud of something happening that should happen, it didn’t and couldn’t remove the damage already done to so many lives. I suppose I’d say I was relieved it was finally abolished, but there’s no pride about it for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet%2C_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog?wprov=sfla1

The thread title would have perhaps been better posed as "Britain without the trans Atlantic slave trade"

People have rightly pointed out the slavery and indentured labour was, and is, a global experience not limited to a particular time or place in history.

However the trans Atlantic slave trade, in which Britain played a major role, was different in the fact it industrialised the slave trade in a epic scale and racialised the condition of slavery to an extent not seen before.

I also think it was, and is, easier for many British people to put slavery and our role out of mind as it did not happen on our soil in any great scale. We are not surrounded by immediate and direct reminders of what happened unlike say Brazil, the West indies and America. The work uncovering the legacy and evidence of our role in the forms of stately homes, names of places and art is very important.

I also think it was, and is, easier for many British people to put slavery and our role out of mind

People living today are not responsible for their what their ancestors have done.

But they can question how advantaged their modern lives are as a consequence of past actions and use that advantage to help benefit others whose modern lives are negatively influenced by those same past actions.

Current UK policy is to reduce foreign aid spending, and successive international attempts to establish a debt jubilee to wipe the slate clean on developing nation indebtedness to developed nations have been stymied in recent years. Developed nations such as the UK are very content with their comfortable position and do not want to have to compete in an equal world. The causes of that inequality include the legacies of colonialism and the slave trade.

Good God the racism in this thread.
Serfs in Eastern Europe were not comparable to chattel slavery--and one branch of my family were freed by the Tsar in the 1860s.

If Britain hadn't started the slave trade and planted it in America, there would have been no cotton for those mills. Slavery is inextricable from the history of Britain and colonialism. It wasn't just sugar. The tobacco industry, too, involved a lot of slave labour.

By the way, the colonists (of various nations) first tried enslaving the Native Americans. It wasn't successful so they turned to importing labour from Africa.

Question all you want if it makes you happy.

I think it’s a really interesting question as our society would be very very different and so would many others countries

how would our wealth and influence been created it’s a really in-depth question that we can’t know the answer to but interesting to explore which I think is likely to in books/pod casts/tv series as we look at our past with a different perspective

I find Georgian and Victorian London history extremely interesting and so much is involved in the slave trade, wealth we gained from our involvement and how colonialism influenced trends, how it was positive for the few and the extreme wealth it generated

You'll find it's a matter of historical record that the Portuguese were the first to enslave Africans to the Americas.

And they dominated this trade for the first 130 years.

Other European states emulated the highly successful Portuguese at the time.

I think that the truth is that it wouldn't be that different.
Africans would still sell Africans in to slavery.
The numbers that would be the missing part of Britain's part in slavery would have been picked up by someone another country.
Yes those involved wouldn't have as much money, but they would still have purchased slave produced and made items.

A question that arises from the OP's question for me is if Britain hadn't been involved would Britain have invested so much in shutting the slave trade down?

I dont think the past slave trade makes that much difference to modern britain no.

But the current slave trade benefits us all enormously, and causes us great harm too
Cheap tech, cheap clothes, cannabis, land fill, crime, environmental damage

I’ve seen lots of images of dogs and other animals sitting at a computer desks, but had not seen or heard that expression until now, or obviously did not take much notice.
You learn something new everyday on the net.

I was a bit confused as your previous post didn’t gel with how I took that comment.

I appreciate you explaining.

Thanks for sharing the link.

I agree. No one should be blamed for the ills of their ancestors, but what a better and pleasant World we could all harmoniously live in, if we all could just empathise with and have respect for others from other parts of the World.

It happened. It’s done and history cannot be changed, but as humans who have continuously evolved over the centuries, we now have the knowledge to change the future for the better and to rid society of all this unnecessary hate.

We’re all part of the human race or is that too simplistic?

I think we’d all be better off concerning ourselves with Climate Change instead of race, as that will eventually finish us all off.

That worries me too. There is a new shopping app (the icon is the colour orange) that is opening up that appears to be items shipped in from the far East at alarmingly cheap prices. I can't see how any of it will be made environmentally friendly, ethically or without slave labour.

If you mean Temu, that that's nothing new. It's just a new competitor alongside AliExpress, BangGood, etc. It only looks new because they're paying a fortune for SM placement and buying marketshare by massively undercutting prices.

Yes, I was thinking… perhaps without cheap cotton everywhere the rich folk would have been forced to give us a fairer deal here following the Enclosure movement and similar trends, so that the possibility of survival and our islands’ resources was shared more equitably again. Perhaps we would have been forced to confront inequality and have these conversations about cost of living a few centuries earlier. Or… perhaps not, the poor have no power, that’s why they are poor. But we certainly wouldn’t have the environmental damage of hopelessly disconnected extreme globalism. Maybe. All might-have-beens are interesting, but unknowable.

That's the problem with history- so many interwoven strands impossible to separate.

No-one can say with any authority what would have developed if a thing didn't happen, happened sooner, or later.

We can only learn from the past and try to do better. That's why I believe the best way forward is to concentrate money and resources into stopping the slave trade that exists NOW.

Reparations, even if realistic (which they are not) would be far better spent honouring those gone before by freeing those alive and enslaved today.