Slavery and Colonialism Are Everyone’s History

[GodessOfThunder]

I was on a thread recently where posters were complaining of slavery and colonialism being “shoehorned” into exhibitions, and were strongly “pushing back” against it being given prominence as a topic in museums and at historic sites. Indeed, transatlantic slavery and colonialism often seem to be regarded as niche historical subjects of interest more to people of colour, and involving only a small number of rich white slave owners and colonial officials.

This perception however, does not reflect reality. Transatlantic slavery effected not only millions of Africans, but pretty much everyone in Britain too. Similarly, colonialism effected not only millions of subjects in the British Empire, but everyone “at home” also. The economy these projects fuelled changed what ordinary people ate and drank and what they wore. They changed how British people thought about non-European people in ways that continue to shape their mindset and create injustice today. Slavery and colonialism helped fund the Industrial Revolution and the jobs people in Britain performed, and much more too.

I’m not suggesting anyone today should feel guilty for these activities. But, these subjects are still all too often not regarded as part of all of our histories. This means attempts to give them proper prominence are met with resistance. If we are to understand British history at a public level properly there is still a great deal of work to do.

Or is it that collectively we should be focusing on the problems we face today? Rather than the past?

Learning about the past is crucial. But has it really informed the world today? A world where slavery is at its peak.

Yes. A lot of people in power are politics or history graduates for a reason. As I said earlier, those who forget the past are damned to repeat it.

There used to be a modern history module in History GCSE, we did about Ireland and it was accurate and not glossed over. No idea if it's still on the syllabus. The thing about history at school though is its never going to cover everything is it, it's supposed to cover a broad range of topics to teach how to research, how to interrogate different sources, where to find information and how to look realistically on how accurate certain sources are etc. I think we need to move past the idea that all worthwhile info is to be taught in schools and look at the skills and the tools people need to consume knowledge themselves. Everyone even the most ignorant know at least that we were colonisers, those that are inclined have more knowledge than ever in their phones and elsewhere, those that aren't bothered wouldn't be in lessons either I doubt.

My Great Grandmother was affected by colonialism as she worked at the age of 9 in a jute factory for 35 hours a week and then attended school. She was a half timer. In fact over half of all men who applied to go to World War 1 from Dundee were rejected as"undersized. underfed and under strengthened" . The average number of people living in one home was 8 and 70% of those lived in 1 or 2 rooms. The other branches of my family not so much if at all - they fished in bleak environments, started at 12 in the privately owned coal mines but mostly were farm labourers. I very much doubt they ever saw a POC in their whole lives or formed negative images of them. They were very busy living their own shit lives.

The term coloniser is so loaded. Every single civilisation in history has been a coloniser. Even within the nation's we went and colonised the various groups of people's were in fighting and land grabbing amongst themselves, it's the very purpose of a society - to expand and succeed. An uncomfortable truth perhaps?

@Newusername1273

I don't know what is taught about Australia in schools. As with Ireland my learning on this subject came much later.

So you weren't taught anything about the colonisation of Australia throughout your education, then?

Just popping on to say that you are here, as on that thread, missing the point. Most people were objecting to a) the thread being derailed and b) not to having slavery discussed where it was relevant, but it being given prominence over other, equally important topics which are consistently ignored.

You also misrepresented what posters were saying on that thread, so it's no surprise to me that you're misrepresenting the thread now.

I am well aware that colonialism is a part of my history - and not only the British variety either, but a far more savage version which killed a fair number of my relatives. But you still treated me like an idiot.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you say, but your arguments would be far more persuasive if you were less patronising, and you didn't dismiss those who disagree as 'borderline racists' and 'less educated' or however you phrased it.

I am not engaging further. Life is too short.

Not through compulsory schooling, no. University, yes.

I don't feel the slightest bit guilty for what my ancestors did in the past. Most of us have benefitted very little from slavery - just a few who owned plantations and took part in the trade. Most of our ancestors had hard lives in the illiterate working classes and were exploited as wage slaves. Some groups weaponize slavery to spread guilt in the wider UK population. Europeans did not invent slavery: it was quite common in the ancient world across other continents and seems to still exist in some places.

Agree it shouldn't be an either or.

However I don't think it's correct to suggest that modern slavery is a different sort of phenomenon, and more akin to organised crime. That just reduces the modern slavery definition to a particular subset of circumstances, when it is actually a broader phenomenon. And supposedly about 3.9 million people today are victims of actual state sponsored forced labour.

I'm sure during the transatlantic slave trade people did say various things that I think I'm seeing people say here about modern slavery such as "it's complicated", "I'm not responsible", "There's not much I can do about it".

I think that modern slavery reflects ongoing colonialism and analysing past colonialism illuminates that. However a problem I witness is that the legacy is often reduced to "white people do bad things and should stop and repent" which contains plenty of truth but actually is an argument that is now quite actively employed to obscure the reality of today's problems and even to prevent white people from taking action. We need to think about who is really benefiting from that. Colonialism past and present does not only break down along racial lines at all - however this is a tool being used to divide us and to prevent from seeing the world as it is now, so that we can't change it.

Truely awful as it was, without the transatlantic slavery we would never have had the industrial revolution and comfortable modern world we live in today.

Even Karl Marx saw the need for slavery:

"Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns, as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery that has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies that have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance."

I don't think Marx is arguing in favour of slavery here. He is just describing how slavery has given rise to capital.

Why do we have to have this discussion when slavery is mentioned?

Why not with other historical atrocities?

Only the Atlantic slave trade seems to need to justify its very existence in the historical narrative.

Generally I think this is a good debate on this thread. As a non-white person I would like to offer a view as to why slavery and UK colonialism is still important now. Part of the justification for the British empire and for slavery was built on a very significant element of racial superiority. In short black people could be enslaved and other nationals colonised because the UK and Europeans generally were superior and people of colour required guidance and structure from their colonial masters. Tropes of aggressive black people and stupid Asian people are rife if you look back at the history of Empire.

The experience of many black and Asian people today is coloured by the deeply embedded beliefs used to justify the behaviours of the past. Our experience therefore is that there are often assumptions that we are more aggressive, more criminal, less clever and lazy.

My non-white eldest son for example is regularly followed by the security guard when he goes into the supermarket where we live (mostly white). What this security is doing is referencing his historic perception, deciding my son is likely to be more criminal than most and therefore decided he needs to be followed.

In the not too different past a close relative was rejected for a job on the grounds she had an accident and would not fit well into the workplace where people might not understand her.

More seriously there is strong evidence that these attitudes mean that in the criminal justice system, employment at senior level and the receipt of healthcare, black and asian people receive poorer outcomes. This is only just becoming apparent in maternity care where assumptions around why and how black and Asian women complain can seriously affect outcomes.

Absolutely not, especially given that here in Northern Ireland there is NO consensus on what happened as Sandra Peake observed.

Moreover, history is not comprised of one long chain of causation as Professor Brian Walker of the Irish Studies Institute explained in his work, "Dancing To History's Tune". The Northern Ireland Troubles itself is rooted in early 20th Century concerns over the question of what self-determination is. It was part of a European wide series of partitions as a result of the question.

It is not related to the area of colonialism. Speaking of the empire, again this was also Europe wide and mainly motivated by various States' concerns over the strength of their neighbours. Its no coincidence European States such as the UK, France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Germany all had empires. There's the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire. To varying degrees, these States were intent on dominating their neighbours. The places around the world they conquered was within this context - not just trade.

Germany came late to Empire building compared to most European States.

Not only were the Irish instrumental in expanding the British Empire further than English could, but they had a much earlier history of slavery of Britons and northern France. They had land in various places in Great Britain and northern France too. There's a reason a lot of people in GB and abroad have genes attributed to Niall Of Nine Hostages. Fifth Century.

@DownNative thanks, will look this up. Niall of Nine Hostages is ringing a bell in the back of my brain!

You've successfully argued for why it should be taught in schools. Think of the critical thinking skills kids would learn about when discussing all the intricacies of Irish history and The Troubles. It absolutely is relevant and essential for our children to learn about this for exactly the reasons you argue it's not.

Yes, the will to “explore”, the incredible “time and logistics” to colonise and enslave so many millions of people. to colonise, to plunder the nations they were “exploring”, to enslave and force - into a life of subjugation, all of those millions of people, generation after generation, living in servitude for glory of king/queen and country. All the atrocities all the suffering caused by this “exploration”.

Yes, it’s astounding what such a tiny country had achieved, in terms of empire. . We should know more about this part of our history, but the majority of people really truly don’t know the truth about empire, because if we really did no one would ever actually have any kind of pride about that era of our history.

Just as a point of interest the concept of race as we know it didn't start to come into existence until the 18th century.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/race-human/The-history-of-the-idea-of-race

This is an interesting read on the subject if you're of a mind to read it.

When slavery was legal in Britain most people didn't have a vote and had no say over policy. It's true we should celebrate Britain's role in slavery and how we ended a global tradition of slavery that went back many thousand years (at least since the last ice age). But it's wrong to blame ordinary people for slavery or claim that they still benefit from it.

We should also remember that Britain itself is a victim of colonization and slavery. The Romans, the Vikings, the Germanic people and the Normans all conquered some or all of the island and used slaves. After the Norman conquest peasants might not technically have been enslaved, but couldn't move around freely or leave to work for another landowner without their current employer's permission - slavery in effect if not name.

It's also important to note that the "classic" slave trade era relied heavily on African cooperation. African tribes had long embraced the tradition of slavery, inter-tribal conflict often leading to enslavement for the losers. When the Europeans arrived to expand the slave industry they were always reliant on local African expertise in acquiring slaves inland and transporting them alive to the coast.

Too often the story goes "Britain bad, Africa good" when that's very much not the case. Slavery has been part of the human experience for a long time, probably its entire existence, and even after Britain was instrumental in ending the slave trade it still exists - there are more slaves today than at any point of history.

@DownNative he has a mahoosive wiki entry!

I agree this is a good thread with people sharing information. I have learned from reading people's comments. It is interesting to see the connection between my Nan (who I mentioned previously and who worked in the mills) and the cotton pickers. I am very open to learning more about slavery and the British Empire and hearing and understanding how this still affects people today. My perception is that many people feel the same and that it's just that there's this bit of indignation that it seems some people want people like my Nan to be held responsible for things they could have had no influence over whatsoever, having been victims themselves. To me this is a class issue; the poor were abused and still are; the poor had no power and still have none, both here in the UK and elsewhere.

Niall Fergusons documentary is interesting viewing (if a little outdated now) and is essentially his book in TV format.

No, not until Northern Ireland's people themselves have formed a consensus on the Troubles.

Perceptions elsewhere can have a significant impact here. This is especially true with Americans of Irish descent, especially those who funded NORAID.

But this is a thread about colonialism and the Troubles was not about colonialism or anti-imperialism even if the Provos liked to present themselves in that manner. The statistics tell us approximately 1,000 or so of those killed by the Provos were from Northern Ireland.

So this wasn't an anti-imperialist situation. It was an internal problem within NI where Republicans especially disagreed with the principle of partition plus consent. It took them 78 years to FINALLY accept NI has a right to be separate from the Republic and a right to decide its own fate. That was always British policy which appears in Sunningdale, Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Belfast Agreement. I think it's in the Anglo-Irish Treaty as well.

The Troubles is not appropriate vis a vis colonialism and slavery.

Calm down, I think you've been imbibing too many modern white guilt stories. We didn't rock up and hunt down the slaves ourselves.

We can look back now and say it was awful but at the time it was a thing that everybody did. We are not immune: Britons have been enslaved by the Italians, as well as being conquered and subjugated by various other parties.

Also consider that we also brought a lot of innovation, culture, and advancement to these places. It can't have been all bad, else they would have all left when they had the chance.