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?

@AAllwelcone yes, I think these families should pay reparations, as their wealth today is a direct benefit of the investment in plantation slavery. And I think the UK should be actively investing in infrastructure and education in former slave colonies to give the descendents of enslaved people the opportunity for upward mobility.

And, I would be happy for my tax ££ to contribute to this.

The question I can't quite square is the right to repatriation to African countries for the descendents of enslaved people. Whilst I accept the desire of people to return 'home,' I recognise both the repatriated people and the home country will require support to enable this.

I don't hear about Portugal and Spain having such conversations about slavery. Is there a reason for this?

Yes. Can't help thinking this focus on Victorian slavery is a convenient distraction from all the exploitation still going on today. I would tackle the current issues before worrying about the past.

I find it tedious when people harp back to hundreds of years ago, to a society/civilisation which was absolutely alien and different to what we are now. I hate that some people think that we need to atone and apologise for something which wasn’t done in our names, something which our very distant ancestors did in another life time. We can’t change what happened, but we can learn from it.

The op question was about slavery though. There is a helkuva lot of other misdeeds the British Empire committed, granted.
Very risky idea, I think bad as the exploitation of Mill workers etc was, I'm not sure comparing it to being kidnapped, exported, bought and sold and arguably now still discriminated against, is useful?

Oh, and not all European nations participated in the transatlantic slave trade.

Britain was the leading nation in it alongside Portugal, with France some way behind. Other nations had their moments - Netherlands, Denmark... - but southern and central Euroe were marginal to it.

The UK shipped tens of thousands of people a year during the age of the enlightenment. That Parliament voted to stop in 1807 was, according to modern historians, a fluke, result of a short-lived moral panic caused by the loss of the North American colonies.

Hats off to the abolitionists, for sure. But that wasn't 'we' the British, but a bunch of obsessive humanitarianism who got lucky, politically.

May be start with Romans...

Unfortunately UK foreign policy is focussed on keeping developing countries poor so that we can stay rich. Saying sorry for slavery is an empty gesture.

The only countries which don't seem to have a history of enslavement of the people of other countries were those where their own people were enslaved (eg Russia's serfs).

@Wazzzzzuuuuuuup yes. There was the head of a really massive aristo family on tv saying they've donated £100k to a fund in Granada and were open to the idea of reparations. Trevlyans I think they were called.
Interesting about repatriation...

I think the idea of payment now is ludicrous, if we are all going to pay for the sins of our fathers how far back should that go? When the Irish get a nice payment from the British we can move on a get a bit more from the Norwegians since the Vikings took over first. And so on.. it would be madness. I don't think anyone should apologise for the acts of their ancestors but just acknowledge these things happened and move on. Similarly I don't believe in the moral superiority of those whose ancestors were victims.

Will women ever get reparations the world over for being classed as property, I wonder? Has that ever happened? Just curious, don’t want to derail!

How much of the world is in the same position as this?

I didn't compare the two. Don't think anyone else did either?

The OP also mentioned colonialism. Colonialism didn't end hundreds of years ago. It ended in this century. Indeed, in the last 50 years.

It’s not endless though. It’s specific things that should be returned to their rightful owners instead of sitting in British museums,

Abolition bills failed for decades dating from before the US Revolutionary War. It’s not like it was abolished on the first try so it was persistence as well as luck.

Southern Europe had local slaves and imported slaves from the Ottoman Empire- which had many slave routes and sources. The Ottomans got their Black African slaves via the East Africa slave trade which then went across the Med to Turkey and into Italy as well as across the Indian Ocean to the Mughal Empire in India. Southern Europe bought Black African slaves, they just didn’t do it via the “Trans-Atlantic slave trade” because they had no coasts on the Atlantic. If they had, the slaves would have been counted as part of it.

Central Europe as in the Holy Roman Empire all their peasants were slaves and so they had no need to go abroad for masses of slaves to be a captive workforce. They bought in a few as they were “exotic” and supplied white slaves to the Ottomans. As were and did the Russian empire.

I remember reading that if women had had the vote an abolition bill would have been passed decades earlier.

@LaMaG This is why I said upthread Black people shouldn't engage in these discussions with white people. You carry on.

One of the most obscene things about the role of the slave trade in the economy of Great Britain is the amount of compensation that was paid to wealthy former slave owners upon abolition. A lot of this was then invested in the technology and industry of the time, providing a large source of funding to the Industrial Revolution. These were state funds that further enriched those that had benefitted from overseas plantations based on slave labour.

@TheOriginalEmu it would always be gesture politics to some people I guess, that's the inherent danger.
Just wondering what reparations have been made in the past, at the risk of inflaming the debate I can only think of Israel, as in created after ww2.
Shows we have done it on the past though.

I don’t think so. That’s just white feminism imho trying to pretend it was only men and it wasn’t.

Holbeck is a fucking disgrace.

Yes. This. That’s why I say those families owe reparations to the descendants of their slaves.

What happened hundreds of years ago is not the people of todays fault. When would it stop, are Germany going to pay back the people who suffered in the war, is America going to give back all the land they stole from native Americans…the list is endless