Some other buyer would have taken them if they werent shipped out, and Western (or Arab) traders were just changing the ownership and location, the sins of the slave-raiders being theirs alone to bear. Certainly they killed them casually often for religious reasons. From Roots. So there were times when food was expensive, we can call those shortages or famines. Over 150 years in America. You might have heard of a Romano-British chap called Patrick, got enslaved and nabbed to Ireland? We pretend we do not like slavery but actually we do not like slave traders. "Incorporating the stories of people like Equiano is merely part of a process of looking at all of British history; not just being selective, not only going to the chapters that make us feel good about ourselves or proud.". I just dont really get what Olusoga is saying. There is no reason to single White people out for unique levels of criticism. It is a good deed that must not go unpunished. Theres an argument about judging people by the standard of their times, though even in the 1500s moral and religious objections to the slave trade had been made and the rationale of crimes against humanity is that some things are so abhorrent they could never truly be legal no matter what moral code the perpetrators justified themselves with. Definitely didnt die out with the Romans. And they will go looking for parts of the past that aren't on the curriculum, and they evidently do. Deliberately shipping that many people that far in order to participate in a newly-created society whose economic system was designed, pretty much from the ground up, around slave labour? So is Richard Murphy. If slavery really mattered theyd be campaigning for reparations from the blacks and arabs/moslems who were doing it long before the white man arrived in Africa and was far more devastating. They are now CM scum and couldnt care less about America. Note, hes a renowned economist. Obama had none. 5 quotes from David Olusoga: 'On a peninsula protruding into one of the great highways of the Atlantic slave trade, a few hundred refugees from British slavery in North America were attempting to recreate the social structures of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages.', 'Time and again events and phenomena that we think we know and understand contain within them lost or camouflaged connections to . Nevertheless, we live in a society that generally regards slavery as an absolute and eternal wrong, and a grave one at that, yet which has historically (at least certain people and places, and including the state itself) benefited from imposing slavery on others. I could just as well feel something else entirely, and Im sceptical of all approaches to impose a supposedly universal, timeless or even just coherent, thats a challenge in itself ethical system. Or anything to do with slavery. But oddly enough, people like Olusoga havent given me the cash yet. But as someone who is damaged by slavery I have lived in racially mixed communities and I am happy to see Obama and Kamala pay up. I imagine few do. For almost 60 years, there was impasse. It could have ended earlier, but the planter interests in parliament defeated William Wilberforces attempts. Black and British: A Forgotten History addresses one of the greatest silences in British historiography. But any planter who deliberately starved his slaves to death would quickly go bust. David Olusoga Ironically, one of the sources we can turn to in order to learn more is his own accounts of late 17th-century Jamaica. It was far too real to her. Writing in english is cultural appropriation so STFU. I can then give him the details of other descendants, he can apologise to and compensate. TV presenter David Olusoga has told the Edinburgh TV Festival his career had sometimes left him feeling "crushed, isolated," and "disempowered". David Olusoga, 49, is a television presenter and historian. No. Viking Dublin was a major slave-trading centre (English, Irish, Scots, anyone else they could get their hands on). Fair point. So my advice would be, for his own health, STFU. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. Slaves were crowded in a new environment with new diseases. So this race baiter can try his guilt trip on someone else. Its very noticable how nobodys mentioning that the Spanish Empire were doing this for several centuries before the British got involved. Very often shaped by the political, technological and economic forces of the times if the Western way of life had remained utterly dependent on Roman-style slavery, Im not sure wed ever have abolished it even amongst our own inhabitants. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. Video, 00:02:30Should black history be taught all year round? I was doing some genealogy research when I discovered my great grandfather was a well known member of the 18th Kentucky Infantry. He writes to inflame white guilt, so that you will ACCEPT destruction of your culture. P rofessor David Olusoga is reviewing a disorientating year from a familiar place: his white-painted study, the one with the guitars hanging from its walls. Pretty sure if you could, implausibly, trace my family tree through various not-very-literate eras youd pass through at least one Anglo-Saxon who owned a bunch of Britons. Africans had a demand for female slaves. A weekly round-up of some of the best articles featured in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, sent each Saturday. Their demands should simply be refused. They organised a boycott of sugar, produced more petitions and hosted meetings. We do not know enough to be sure. Olusoga brilliantly reveals such contradictions in British society. . This seems rather unlikely. But maybe they did not. It seems absurd to me that anyone should be concerned about what happened 200 or 500 years ago. His dad met his mom at the city's university in the 1960s. Like the Nigerian slavers who enslaved and sold the slaves, you mean? Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates. It was, I believe, the first book I ever bought for myself with my own money. In 1986 I came across the book Staying Power by the British journalist Peter Fryer. But that is not the argument I am making. BurningEars August 30, 2020 at 3:07 pm Theres a flaw in arguments of the form frankly you should be glad I murdered your sister. Such sources give his writing freshness, originality and compassion. BZZZTT!! He talks about slavery because YOU care. If you think 14 is the wrong decision for the boundary, a better argument is a rebuttal of the strongest case for 14 rather than a rebuttal of a straw-man version of it. But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided, so I dont think the traders can be given a pass on this front either. In 1861, the Economist stated that nearly four million people in Britain depended directly and indirectly on the cotton industry; a fifth of the entire population. Olusoga, who is half-Nigerian, traces this focus to his mother telling him when he was a child that Nigerian soldiers served in World War II. I doubt that they are now firmly united in a common cause. Probably few other societies had as much chance of buying freedom. The UK, Norway, Benelux, Spain, Malta and Switzerland are, I believe, the only western European countries to set it at 16. Duke University professor, William Darity Jr, and writer, Kirsten Mullen, jointly published a report for The Roosevelt Institute, an American liberal think tank, laying out a case for slavery reparations. We do not know how great the demand for women was. It was an apt university to experiment with such developments, since Lord Scarman, who reported on the Brixton riots of 1981, was its chancellor. Although I would expect the Germans, and perhaps even the Japanese, to be happy they lost the war. Women such as Elizabeth Heyrick continued to lobby for the abolition of slavery. The Barbados slave code of 1661 stripped Africans of all human rights, and set out ways in which they were to be punished, to exert control over their labour (mutilation of the face, slitting of nostrils, castration, execution). Olusoga has benefited from and added significantly to the work of Fryer and other historians such as James Walvin. Would the good professor really be so different if genealogical records could prove he had African ancestors who owned African slaves? Yet theyre so many centuries and generations removed from the crime, everybody involved with the decision-making is long-dead and while the responsible state still exists, in practice compensation comes from taxes paid by citizens who had no part in it all. David Olusoga is a 49-year-old historian and presenter Credit: Getty - Contributor David Olusoga is a British Nigerian historian, broadcaster and writer. Kyle Rittenhouse, unlike the rest of their sorry asses, did something. By David Dabydeen (Photo By Alamy) Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. The answer is money. I learned the hard way. Anti-black riots broke out in Liverpool that year. The argument isnt whether historical slavery was right or wrong or who should accept responsibility for it. You can be redeemed, you worthless pasty people. Theres probably more mileage in my country, or at least its historical incarnation, fought against it because unlike the actual people involved, the state is still around. Britain should be proud of helping to stop (African to America) slavery, like the Republican Party and unlike the Democrats. I hadnt gotten far when she stopped me cold, pointing out that her best friend, a 15 year old girl knitting beside a window in her house, was machine gunned by an American P-51 pilot. In the UK its not white people enslaving blacks anymore, but Asians enslaving other Asians, as in Leicesters clothing sweatshops. Maybe Europeans did increase demand. He is the undisputed King of the Internet Pedants and Lord of the Unnecessary Snark. Black and British: A Forgotten History Peter completed his award-winning PhD, exploring stress and coping in elite sports coaching, at Sheffield Hallam in 2012. I brought up paedophilia to demonstrate that there are things not worth my time. A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history - sent every Wednesday. There is no reason to think that slavery was nicer in Africa. I cant see the point of denying it was all pretty awful. (Im just presenting the case here in reality there are obviously some big questions about the logic of Nuremberg etc, just as there are questions about how judges in Common Law occasionally summon up things as if they had always and forever been a part of the Law, albeit previously unrecorded, rather than something the judge just made up.). And so many hundreds of thousands of British workers were directly dependent on slavery (from sailors to those who built, rigged and repaired ships) that it was easy to turn a blind eye to the inhumanity. Now sixteen sounds about okay to me if youre going to stick a limit somewhere, but then being British I suppose Im more likely to think the system Im accustomed to is normal and reasonable. What difference has it made? My great grandfather fought to end slavery in a war. Then a young teenager, he was driven out of his council home, together with his grandmother, mother, two sisters and younger brother, by a sustained campaign of nightly stoning of their windows. Dr Peter Olusoga is a senior psychology lecturer at Sheffield Hallam university. Video, 00:02:30. Thats fine, BraveFart. It happened. But morals are very transient things. MBE, do not entertain these people, not for one second. And the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. If someone from Portugal or France wants to explain why their country has done a better job of getting the balance right, Im open to hearing it. Of course if a rule was instituted that only people with white skins had to pay taxes, it might happen. Hundreds of White women raped every day. Hes insisting that a household headed by a 21 year old black should have the average wealth of all white households. Even discussing it gives your opponents arguments merit. The agreement is being touted as a . Separated from home and family and landed in the West Indies (countless numbers dying of suffocation during the journey, given that the people traffickers were packing the holds to maximise profits), the Africans had no recourse to the law, much less the conscience of their captors. What do you think their stongest argument is? And the fact youre moved to tears by discovering for the first time a great-great-great-grandmother of yours was a prostitute single-mum with seven kids or a great-x5-uncle you had never heard of was imprisoned for murder, well, your utter lack of knowledge simply reveals how little youve been influenced by them, so youre hardly discovering a new facet of yourself at all. The vast majority of Americans are not guilty. At the moment it seems to regarded as a good thing. It doesnt end with the parties saying Well that was pleasantly intellectually stimulating, now lets have a nice game of cricket Youre opponents are not playing by the same rules as you are. The system he witnessed and wrote about was one in which human beings were worked to death. If we went down this route thered be goodness knows how much fun and games to be had with legal claims over the treatment of Irish by Cromwell, the clearing of the Highlands and so on, before you even get on to the globe-spanning imperial stuff. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards. I am of Ulster Scot heritage, who were originally John Knoxs Cumberland Presbyterians, VERY MUCH against slavery. I do not see what is different between a plantation in Africa and a plantation in Virginia. First launched in London in 1987, it aims to highlight and celebrate what black people have achieved in Britain throughout history. @ Boganboy Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade is part of the national curriculum, although it is not statutory. But slaves were more valuable, so the British fought the Spanish for a share in the trade and eventually came to dominate it. However, it applies to at least 80% of Americans. When the American Civil War interrupted the supply of cotton, hundreds of thousands of British workers were made destitute, dependent on soup kitchens, and the British economy was dealt a thunderous blow, all because an ocean away the forced labour of four million enslaved black Americans had been disrupted. In the case of slavery the answer is clear. The Russians do not have these problems because they are not ashamed. Well one economist has worked out the amount to be paid (although not on a damages basis, when one imagines blacks might end up paying whites, but on a close the wealth gap basis): A renowned economist has said that $12 trillion should be afforded to black Americans in reparation for slavery to help the close wealth gap. Dont even get me started on the Moors, Arabs and Ottomans, As for getting rich many African tribes kept slaves and their societies did not get rich. Thats why when the question is raised, I always point out that they owe me lots and lots of money. It isnt going to happen anyway. at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too. Exactly, bis. "We are on a journey in this country and other countries are on similar journeys to try and reconnect to parts of our history that had traditionally been edited out," adds Prof Olusoga. Wider imperialism reparations that include South Asia, China for the Opium Wars and so on, surely even more prohibitively costly, regardless of how effective the education system gets at making young Brits feel a vague sense of guilt about it all. The strongest argument I can see for reparations is not that white people bear some kind of ancestral blame. After all, adult males were all but worthless and demand for women might have been enough to drive the trade anyway. History is just one awful thing after another. Nobody will stop you, honest. Get back to me in seven years, when youre ready to order. In the USA? Slavery within West African societies being different again I dont think the places with very high rates of local slavery were anything like the sugar plantations. During the Second World War, thousands of black American soldiers stationed in Britain were befriended by white Britons who opposed efforts by the white military to segregate them. This is a moral argument. The Celtic version of slavery (which ran to quite a different model) was still going on in the places the Romans didnt reach. is that the extra demand distorted the market, led directly to more armed slave-raiding expeditions against rival tribes and so on.. That is not true. What has he got to say about that? Fired by religious feeling, they embarked on a campaign of public education and political lobbying unprecedented in scale and revolutionary in nature. "This is a richer history as well as a necessary history; this is a more vivid history as well as a history that tells the back stories of more people in this country than the traditional narratives we've had.". Will Britain change? And the transatlantic slave trade? Their cities, as well as their comfort, will rapidly decay. Not many remember anything about segregation either. My family did nothing. Would probably have taken your suggestion as a challenge. Between that night at the opera and 1807, nearly 800,000 Africans were enslaved. Which of those societies does Olusogas ancestry come from? Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. In America few were castrated, which is why there are now >40 million descendants there. So 10.416 were sold by the Africans every month for one hundred years, There will be no peace on this issue until black people acknowledge their own responsibility for the trade. Quite possibly slave-raiding Gaels before that. If the alternative was that they were killed? He updates Fryer, citing radioisotope analysis of skeletons and craniometrics, which support written documentation of Aurelian Moors guarding Hadrians Wall and settling in places such as Yorkshire. Olusogas stated purpose is to argue that black British history is not about migration and settlement, whether of black servants in the 18th century or black workers in the Windrush era. How could Britain, a civilised and Christian nation, indulge in rape, torture, killing and the forced labour of Africans over two centuries? Not to say it was nice.. As Black British History Month draws to a close, TV historian Prof David Olusoga looks at the impact it's had - and how young people are taking it on. Prof Olusoga, the presenter of the A House Through Time TV series, calls it an act of "historical salvage" to bring to the fore the black British figures who had been "lost in the archives, completely forgotten". Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. He saw how enslaved people who had risen up were burnt to death, castrated or mutilated, punishments he regarded as merited. (At least in our society) Get over it. It costs money to replace them and after a famine the price of slaves would rise. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. Its entirely possible to think something was awful without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt or personal responsibility. Olusoga is just getting even because he was attacked by the right when he was a teenager. Was never entirely sure which bits were believed and which bits were just a fun bit of intellectual muscle-flexing couldnt all have been intended seriously since so many posts contradicted each other. Those who grew rich on slavery and the slave trade were not neutral and no achievement or act of philanthropy justifies airbrushing their involvement from history. Video1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, How 10% of Nigerian registered voters delivered victory, Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales, The Indian-American CEO who wants to be US president, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip. (I suppose it makes a point about blame not being distributed homogeneously, or that a certain group of people shouldnt be guilted just because they share the same colour of skin with another bunch of people you do think are guilty. I havent said anything about my personal sense of guilt or responsibility. David Olusoga Historian, broadcaster and film-maker. A covering letter would be a courtesy but probably not a necessity. Perhaps Im a bit more culturally relativist these days, but just read it again, still absolutely awful. He adds: "The reason Equiano's story, Equiano's voice, is not as well known as it should be, is because we have a long habit in this country of not wanting to talk about slavery. Societies have had a long history of treating minorities harshly. Sure. The stars are out as Dr Pete Olusoga explores the psychology of stage and screen with the wonderful British actor (and Coronation Street veteran), Shobna Gulati. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion? How does importing new labour from West Africa solve the food shortage in the West Indies? Full text must be online somewhere but theres an extract at https://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-real-vikings/articles/eyewitness-to-the-vikings. It is a form of self-loathing. The rest apart from Ireland (17, partly due to influence of aforementioned Patrick) set it younger. Married an American GI after the war. "They're not looking to history only to make them feel good and give them comfort, but they're looking to history to tell them things about truths about their society that we have traditionally edited out of British history.". That hes able to write this article is because hes living in what is, by historical standards, a remarkably tolerant society. I havent the faintest idea whether slavery in the Roman controlled areas of Britain was more along the continental Roman model or retained Celtic characteristics. TV historian David Olusoga claims it is "palpable nonsense" to say that removing controversial statues "somehow impoverishes history". I know there are posters on here who see stepping into their opponents perspective as a dangerous and pointless endeavour that gives undue worth to a viewpoint they despise, but purely as a mental exercise theres usually something to be said for examining your opponents strongest argument instead of their weakest. "They were barely known even to historians. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has . Moreover its arguably unjust that only victims of still-extant states have a route to compensation whereas people from ethnic groups roughly contemporaneously massacred, enslaved and sacrificed by the Aztec Empire have nobody to sue. "They look to history not just for inspiration and comfort, not just for heroes and for glorious chapters; they look for history expecting to find challenging stories, painful stories, dark truths, villains as well as heroes. Yet American slave-produced raw cotton continued to feed the 4,500 mills of Lancashire. The rest of this looks like the usual white washing (so to speak) of African slavery. So he calls himself a Geordie. They are pretty much airbrushed from history, whereas the transatlantic slave trade seems to be wall-to-wall on our TV screens and in our school textbooks. Within the EU the two most common ages of consent are 14 and 15 (if Ive done my counting correctly), though in some but not all cases thats with additional restrictions on permissible age gaps. Not good. Needless to say, the national mood changed. If Olusoga is looking for apologies or compensation for slavery, I am quite prepared to meet him, accept his apology, togehr with cash, cheque or even a postal order. Pretty much everybody in the West is against slavery. No member of my family ever owned slaves. Indeed, third-century York may have been more ethnically and racially diverse than present-day York. The good news is that Black Lives Matter may be that trigger. They may not be happy about Dresden or Hiroshima but their lives are much better. If you had spare cash or could borrow, investment in slavery was a sure winner, never mind slave rebellions or hurricanes that destroyed cane fields. Id say this to Mr Olusoga. But a group of 12 disciples of Christ set out to change things. Just how much should Olusoga receive? MyBurningEars August 30, 2020 at 3:31 pm Deliberately shipping that many people that far in order to participate in a newly-created society whose economic system was designed, pretty much from the ground up, around slave labour?, True that unlike certain other examples of slavery, you werent likely to be killed as part of a religious sacrifice or as part of your owners funeral., But there have been other societies with slavery where slaves had more autonomy and a greater chance of buying their freedom..
73 Canal Street, New York, NY
