The abolition of slavery

I think they should rename the buildings if it will make people feel better.

Societies grow and mature just as people grow and mature. Slavery was just as wrong then, but Ba wouldn't hold someone engaged in slavery from that time as he would now. To a certain extent, they didn't know better.

Of course, just like a child caught shoplifting, they still need their bottom paddled.

Blair is of course not responsible for the slave trade, but as somebody has pointed out, he is a represantative. My personal opinion is that any state which has profited from slave trade grand style would do the memory of the past's slaves and their own self esteem as a society a bigger favour if they put some extra energy in fighting today's slavery.

The saddest point is, from today's point of view, that, while still working over the slave trades of the past, most states involved on both side tend to neglect that never in humanity's history so much actual slaves lived on this planet - people, particularly children, sold, chaeaper than ever in history too*, as sex slaves, cheap workers, camel jockeys, maidens, etc etc. Remember Tempus horrible experience with the maid? She probably hired willingly at some point, not knowing what was coming, into what has to be called slavery: You are in every way at someone elses mercy, physically and economically, and with no way to freely leave and escape your situation. You are being owned.
Those states still turning (at least) a blind eye on slavery within their borders should focus on that.

I do understand that there is still a public discourse on slave trade throughout history. The broader context of the arrival of Europeans and later colonialism is still an undercurrent of many, many conflicts around the world today, particulary on the African continent. Although the remark that often native elites where involved in slave trade is true. Nobility sold their subjects to overseas as did nobility everywhere in the world; more often though whole societies turned against their lesser armed neighbours and sold their POWs, market demand often churning such conflicts.

I find it an interesting, but rather difficult question when historical responsibility needs to end. I think that historical guilt and personal guilt should be divided, for once - when you did not load personal guilt upon your shoulders that is, of course.

I know that historical cases are hardly ever comparable. Still - my parent's generation, for example, was born after WW2; now, had this generation just said, "Hey, we weren't born, didn't do anything to anybody! So, no guilt, no excuses!", this present society would have developed differently, and not for the better.
I know that as such this example is a little over the top. I also know that 200 years do make a difference. So does that the survivors of persecution through the Third Reich were still alive, and the wounds were fresh when my parents were younger. But even now that all the culprits die of old age or are already dead, I think that we are doing our own society as well as the memory of the dead a favour if we remember what has happened with, well, a gist of collective responsibility.

Because especially in times like these, when we think we are acting rational, and are so far from it, it should be remembered that a state loosing sight of protecting every human's dignity -and other old fashioned icons like it, even when it doesn't pay out in economical terms (any states icon these days)- is a very poisonous thing. Closing the historical files of any atrocity is always a two sided thing.


One other thing comes to mind, - and I am sorry if I turn this topic, but it shows why I see this as a rather complex one - ten years ago or so my father and I had a (civilzed) discussion with a colleague of his about reparation lawsuits from several families - Eastern European forced laborers as well as several Jewish families from the USA whose members had managed to flee the Third Reich at the price of all they posessed at the time.
It was about compensation for both endurance as well as lost family fortunes, and possible only then because before that, the Iron Curtain had prevented such processes. The colleague argued that after fifty years, demanding repayment from firms which were struggling after the Reunification anyway, seemed senseless to him, because the people who had built those firms for decades weren't to blame. We objected that many of these firms managed to rebuild so quickly after the Second World War because nobody back then dared to take their stolen capital, or make them pay for having used Forced Laborers, because nobody wanted to sustain a poor Germany in the middle of Europe right at the start of the Cold War, and that it wasn't the victims fault nobody would have wanted to debate their cases until then - so they shouldn't be made responsible for the delay with which this was happening.

One could argue that moral repayment for the slave trade has been horribly delayed - I think that is how many people feel. (Just trying to imagine their point of view here, nothing you wrote was wrong as such after my opinion.) But this whole case might also show that delaying such clearing processes in history only leads to the remainings still coming back to bite you in the ass, even when it is 200 years later. And with that, I don't mean the fact Blair had to apologize, and that so many people feel uncomfortable about that, but more the fact that so many people are still feeling they are being owned an apology, and living the lives that makes them feel that way.




*children from 30 USDollars upwards, in some parts of the world.

Hsing, you said everything I wanted to say last night but was too tired to get the words out - so I simply wrote: I think they should rename the buildings if it will make people feel better. But, if you could read between the line, I meant to say everything that Hsing did. :smile:

This is an interesting subject.

There has been a strong focus in the articles I've read on slavery today, not just of 200 years ago, and how and where the slave trade exists now, in the UK and abroad. So I don't think it's the case that we're focusing on history at the expense of dealing with current problems. Especially as a problem from 200 years ago that wasn't dealt with is still a problem now, as Hsing expressed.

That said, I don't think it's the case that slavery has been ignored or Britain's part in it glossed over. I find it slightly odd that there is so much angst over Britain's part in the trans-Atlantic slave trade when it was also this country that took the chief role in bringing it to an end (theoretically - I suppose really it just went underground). If we are identifying ourselves with our nationality and history - rather than personal responsibility, as Spiky commented - should we not be proud of the part Britain played in bringing an end to this part of the history of slave-trading?

For myself, the pride and the shame are fairly evenly balanced. I don't feel the need to apologise for or boast about my country.

Regarding reparations... I can see the case for them, but, ultimately, what good do they do? And where does it all end? I think it's reasonable to ask for reparations for something that happened in your lifetime, like the people Hsing talked about. But there has to be a cut-off point. Should English people demand reparations because we were sold as slaves in the Roman Empire (liked Roman touching on the Romans, by the way )? I do have sympathy for people who have suffered, but I do think there comes a point where common sense has to prevail over feelings that someone owes you something.

I suppose it depends where you live and your circumstances. If I grew up somewhere where I felt belittled all the time, where people treated me differently because of my race, I'd wonder what the hell happened in my ancestral past to make me so unlucky to be living in such a place... then I'd think, oh yeah my ancestors were stolen and brought here against their will and feel a little self-conscious about the facts of my history and possibly have a stigma about being surrounded by people whose ancesters brought my ancestors here and so on.

I'm not sure where you draw the line with such a massive thing as this. There's no particular people to blame, like Hitler, just countries, governments and groups of people. I think we can thank God, or whatever, that our ancestors finally gave up slavery but I also think that expecting praise for doing it is slightly dodgy considering it's the same people that started doing it in the first place. I don't mean England invented slavery, I just mean that England was committing atrocoties then decided not to and shouldn't be praised for deciding not to as much as admonished for doing it in the first place.

I'm not sure how much there has been in the way of apologies in the past, very little I should imagine, and guess it was more a case of saying to the slaves: "we don't do slavery anymore, you can all go and do something else if you want... or maybe stay here working for whoever, but under your own free will".

I think the main thing is for people to remember it happened and try to behave more nicely to each other in the future. If there ever are any reparations I'm sure there must be a charity group or two that could get the money.

That seems like a pretty good summary, Mal.

I don't think England (or, indeed, Britain) should be praised for stopping doing something bad, but I think an acknowledgement of it is necessary when analysing the past. If you had a child who kept behaving badly, then realised he was behaving badly and tried to make amends, you wouldn't simply punish him for behaving badly - you'd take into account that he was aware he'd done wrong and was trying to fix it. Or you would if you were a good parent, anyway. Of course, if his bad behaviour had been directed at another child, an apology would be appropriate - but then we're back into the realms of personal responsibility versus being a spokesperson for a group or nation.

We had a discussion at church the other day (we're looking at slavery for our Lent course this year) about whether or not the trans-Atlantic slave trade has had a lasting effect on race relations now. I think the general conclusion was that it very much has done in the US, but less so in the UK. I was interested that a Jamaican woman in the group felt that, in this country, we need to move on from navel-gazing and looking at the past and simply work on race relations now and in the future. She thinks that for most black people in Britain, slaves in America had no more to do with their lives than abused women in China; people whose plight draws sympathy and compassion, but who are entirely unrelated in their circumstances. She thinks that Blair's apology is only really relevant to Americans. I'm not sure that I agree with her.