Thread by @docrussjackson

The 1833 #Slavery Abolition Act outlawed slavery in most of the British empire & included 'slave compensation'. The Govt loaned the equivalent of £300bn, which went exclusively to slave-owners.

Not one penny has ever gone to slaves or their descendants.

theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/…

To compensate the slave owners, the British Govt loaned from Nathan Mayer Rothschild - said to be the richest man on earth - £15 million (£1.43 billion today) with interest, which was finally paid off by British taxpayers in 2015.

Rothschild was a claimant under the scheme.

Eventually, in 2006, The Church of England voted to apologise to descendants of victims of the slave trade.

At the time, Rev Simon Bessant, described the Church's involvement in the trade, saying: "We were at the heart of it."

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/469489…

At least 11 former Bank of England governors & 16 early directors either benefitted from the 'compensation' payments, or had links to the slave trade.

In 2020, The Bank of England apologised for its "inexcusable connections", as did pub chain Greene King.
ucl.ac.uk/lbs/firm/view/…

Half of all the Africans transported into slavery during the 18th century were carried in the holds of British ships. From the 15th - 19th centuries, more than 11 million shackled black captives were forcibly transported to the Americas, and unknown multitudes were lost at sea.

Captives were often thrown overboard when they were too sick, or too strong-willed, or too numerous to feed. Those who survived the journey were dumped on the shores and sold to the highest bidder, then sold on again and again like financial assets.

Thomas Thistlewood, a British slave owner in Jamaica in the mid-1700s, recorded 3,852 acts of sexual intercourse with 136 enslaved women in his 37 years in Jamaica. He described punishing a slave by ordering defecation in a slave's mouths then gagging them for 4 - 5 hours.

Britain is the sixth largest economy on earth - but Britain could not have become the most powerful economic force on earth by the turn of the 19th century without commanding the largest slave plantation economies on earth, with more than 800,000 people enslaved.

The antislavery movement depended on expanding democratic participation in civic debate, with British women & the working classes playing a crucial role in the abolitionist ranks: ordinary people pressed parliamentarians to pass laws that eventually brought slavery to an end.

In Britain, the popular narrative often ignores the fact that blacks on plantations were convinced of their own personhood long before anyone else. Rebellions were endemic to slavery, a& by the 1820s, many slave societies in the British Caribbean were experiencing insurgencies.

Shortly after Christmas 1831, a rebellion broke out in Jamaica. 60,000 enslaved people went on strike, burning the sugar cane & using their tools to smash up sugar mills. They imprisoned slave owners on their estates, but without physically harming them.

The British Jamaican Govt responded by violently stamping out the rebellion, killing more than 540 black people in combat, & later with firing squads & the gallows. The uprising sent shockwaves through the British parliament & accelerated the push for the abolition of slavery.

Not only did blacks mobilise for their own liberation, but by the 1820s slavery clashed with an economic principle that was becoming an article of faith for British capitalists: free trade, & the doctrine of 'free-market capitalism' responsible for grotesque inequality today.

Other slave-owning states followed the British example, but the compensation Britain paid to its slave owners was by far the most generous. Britain stood out in its willingness to appease slave owners, & to burden future generations with the responsibility of paying for it.

The benefits of slave-owner compensation were passed down from generation to generation of Britain’s elite. Among the descendants of the recipients of slave-owner compensation is the former prime minister David Cameron.

Slave owners received another form of compensation: the guaranteed free labour of blacks on plantations for a period of years after emancipation. Britain declared it would teach blacks how to 'use their freedom responsibly, & train them out of their natural state of savagery.'

Apprentices accused of laziness – what slave owners called the “negro disease” – were hung by their hands from a plank & forced to “dance” a treadmill. If they fell, they would be battered on their chest, feet & shins by the wooden planks, & would often be whipped.

In 2013, Hilary Beckles, Caribbean Reparations Commission Chair, anchored his demand for reparations in the need for the British state to admit its role in forcefully extracting wealth from the Caribbean, impeding industrialisation and causing chronic poverty.

The legacies of slavery & racism are manifested in increased likelihood of insecure employment, poorer health & educational attainment, increased incarceration rates & huge underrepresentation in positions of power – in politics, academia & the judiciary, in particular.

This THREAD is based mainly on extracts from this excellent & informative 2018 article by Historian Kris Manjapra (@kmanjapra)

theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/…

Kris' 2020 important book 'Colonialism in Global Perspective', explores histories of conquest, settler colonialism, racial slavery, & empire, exposing the enduring role of colonial force & freedom struggle in the making of our modern world.

cambridge.org/core/books/col…