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?

@ChopperC110P yes sorry i stand corrected. Truly awful history. I guess the question involves exploitation through colonisation as much as slavery op?
Do you think reparations shd be paid by certain families @Wazzzzzuuuuuuup ?

so many countries got rich from dealing with slaves and it is such a part of human host so it is hard to compare. Portugal / Brazil / Middle Eastern countries/ African countries / France/ Spain.
lots of Irish were taken as slaves by Algeria so what would Algeria be like if it hadn’t captured Irish and Cornwall for slaves?
there are still slaves now too.

and their slaves.

It won’t be long before the racist trolls, appear if they haven’t already. I’m going to mind my own Black business elsewhere, as this shit is tiring.

Most of the super rich around these days made their money from fossil fuels or in the dotcom boom, not in plantations.

Correct, Im wondering where the restorative interventions are for my indentured ancestors who were little better off than slaves, given they had no rights to leave their 'employer' and didnt choose to be indentured and were bought and sold between 'employers' in the first place

Having completed a huge amount of my genealogy, there are countless examples of this.

@Wakandian I'm really sorry u feel like that I genuinely want to learn. Im white, my ancerstors were in the sugar trade, I feel ashamed. I have an African family member who hates my side of the family (I havnt told her about the sugared thing) and I jist want to learn how to be more understanding and humble I guess.

I think the industrial revolution probably had as much, if not more, to do with Britain's wealth and success as the proceeds of slavery.

Agree with @namechangingagainandgain why don't we concentrate on people who are living in slavery and exploitation today, in this country, first - sort out the rest later.

It does seem that the slave trade and colonialism are so much part of the uk and europe that people cant imagine a different uk so seem to want make out its not that bad instead.

No one is blaming me for it so i dont need to defend it.

The thing that strikes me is actually all that Georgian/ Victorian architecture, all those stately hones, beautiful and often though of as aspirational- nearly all built on the profit of enslaved people. :(

The british empire enslaved as many brits as non brits, so overall, I doubt it would make much difference overall to anyone now if it had existed or not

Because Brian is the most successful coloniser in the "old world" (Europe)

Yes, I think any British money from the slave trade is long spent. How else did they build the stately homes dotted all over the countryside? But then I’m sure money from slavery was then invested in the stock market- so it was a goose that kept laying golden eggs for those still rich families that have been rich for generations. I think there are many families that do owe reparations.

Wasn’t just slavery though was it, the genocides of native Australians the aborigines, the Native Americans, just so that the settlers could claim the land as their”own”.

Britain without the modern slave trade would look very different

NO cheap clothing, no disposable clothing, much less waste in landfill

No cannabis, no cannabis related crime and violence

No constant updates of mobile phones, people making do with older tech for longer

Hugely less violence, war, climate damage and waste

Isn't it just?

Yes if you include areas where no slavery was, but if you limit to just the colonies that were founded and run on slavery, the Spanish Empire was more successful if you’re measuring by sq km of territory and population size.

Um... Britain introduced these anti-slave trade patrols only after the slave trade had been banned here, to make sure that other countries couldn't go on profiting from a trade the UK had abandoned.

Slavery has been widespread but far from universal in history, and the transatlantic slave trade is unique in scale, duration, the intensity of exploitation and the toxic legacy of racism that it left. In many societies there were routes to emancipation and high-status work even for enslaved people. Not in transatlantic slavery.

If you want to slap yourself on the shoulder for the UK having stopped slave trading, you better also beat you chest over the 200+ years when fortunes were made in British colonies by working people to death. This was not history as usual.

Alternatively, we could stop judging ourselves and each other by the deeds of long-dead ancestors and try to make things better now.

Good book on the difference transatlantiv slavery made: Kenneth Pomeranz, the great divergence. Short summary: hard to imagine the industrial revolution without slavery.

Its not a black white thing. Don't simplify it. I'm Irish and we suffered years of brutality and genocide at the hands of colonial Britain. 1 million died during Victorian years of a so called famine because our food was exported to feed British, anyone who rose up or tried to steal food was shot. Yet we were subjected to harsh institutional and social racism after gaining independence. There are those in NI who would argue its still unresolved. Please don't make it about colour.

True, although the almost genocide of the Native Americans didn’t occur until it was the USA. The British colonists did commit atrocities and massacres, but the full scale wars intent on genocide were by the US Army.

Look at what is going on in Canada against the indigenous people today.
The world cup stadium in Qatar! Yet the British football fans all attended and it was celebrated.
Myanmar.

I thought this - my ancestors working in cotton mills were barely surviving and were illiterate and had no vote. I highly doubt they had a share of anything, let alone a slave.

Brazil actually had more slaves than any other nation and the Portuguese had a slave trade for longer than anyone else and took the Royal Navy to stop it along with stopping the Africans too.
it’s complicated. There are probably many African descendants of slave owners than of slaves and freed slaves often took slaves themselves.
alex Scott did a “who do you think you are ?” expecting to find out she was a descendant of slavery but instead found she was a descendant of a slave owner who had 17 slaves iirc. She was quite upset understandably.
i would like to see a concerted effort to end slavery now and we are all complicit buying cheap stuff.
just as complicit as the Georgians or whoever eating sugar

As despicable as that was - my illiterate white English ancestors with no vote can't have had much of a say in it. As usual it was the establishment and the fucking aristos.

And also through the exploitation of white working class people who lived in miserable conditions, worked hard, died young etc.

No one gets rich solely through their own effort. It's always through the exploitation of the poor. Nowadays those poor are mostly in developing countries mining the metals that go into batteries etc.