Like Fryers book, Olusogas will inspire and will come to be seen as a major effort to address one of the greatest silences in British historiography. 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. They may have been turning people they would have killed into a profitable commodity. Re putting the argument for paedophilia they actually gave Gide the Nobel prize for literature didnt they? "Equiano is the most important voice that we have from the British experience of slavery and the slave trade," he said. Or anything to do with slavery. Guess wed have to print it. 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. 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. I assume he is not very bright and Race Hustling is very lucrative. Pretty much everybody in the West is against slavery. I am not so sure about that although it is another argument. Even Bill Clinton had affinity for the USA. 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. Everyone was. Grew up in Quedlinburg. Rather that certain western states, still in existence therefore potentially still liable, regulated and indeed encouraged the development of both the transatlantic slave trade and the slave-labour economic systems of the colonies, at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too. BZZZTT!! But its still awful, even on a historical scale. Shouldnt Olusoga be writing in Ubangi bantu-language? Over 1000 years in Britain. He was immersed in it. If the alternative was that they were killed? @ Boganboy Ive always agreed that the Africans should pay reparations to the rest of us for dumping all those people they wanted to get rid of on us. Supported by African authors of slave narratives such as Olaudah Equiano and Ottabah Cugoano, they held meetings all over the country, attracting huge crowds. people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes This history of the black presence in . 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. Would also apply even if down a different family line there had been beneficiaries of the slave trade. The rest apart from Ireland (17, partly due to influence of aforementioned Patrick) set it younger. There is the Push argument and the Pull argument. Reckon they found commenters guessing which parts of a hypothetical argument were meant all part of the fun, In many respects youre one of the posters here whose views on morality Im closest to our personal moralities probably being quite far apart, but I recognise mine as very much the product of my upbringing and surrounding society and know enough about other places and times to realise just how contingent that makes them. A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown. And Britain worked for the whole of the 19th century to put down slavery in Africa. Oh man. He is the undisputed King of the Internet Pedants and Lord of the Unnecessary Snark. I have a peeve about the BBC genealogical show Who do you think you are? which I dont know whether has been inflected upon the Left Pond. Good point, I wonder how he squares the obviously comfortable living he has writing, opining and broadcasting about slavery with his principles. "So when black history was missing - the history of empire, the history of slavery - was missing from my history lessons, I didn't have a place to go to discover those missing chapters. A fifty quid note in the hand of the first black bloke you encounter. 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. And yet Africans and West Indians were banned from the victory parade in 1919. They included Josiah Wedgwood (the pottery entrepreneur), Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. We do not know how great the demand for women was. 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. David Olusoga's Family David Olusoga, age 49 was born to a Nigerian father and a British mother. When Olusoga recalled the experience before television cameras last year, he wept. And they will go looking for parts of the past that aren't on the curriculum, and they evidently do. That star stuff wont last. No doubt life expectancy of a slave was shorter than that for a free man. Intellectually more convincing anyway for practical and political purposes, demolishing a straw-man often makes a better video or audio clip while simultaneously making your opponents position sound stupid. Thats before you get on to the Khoisan and the Zulus, the Carthaginians and Romans, the Vikings versus pretty much anyone else who lived within raiding distance, Theres a fundamental weakness with all theories of universal law or justice, which is that across time and space, the human conception of what is right and just seems to be extremely varied and rarely (to modern Western eyes) pleasant. That someone did something 200 years ago means double ought nothing.. That involved killing the adult men. I imagine few do. How could Britain, a civilised and Christian nation, indulge in rape, torture, killing and the forced labour of Africans over two centuries? That was when the Democrats were still Americans. is that the extra demand distorted the market, led directly to more armed slave-raiding expeditions against rival tribes and so on.. "This generation has the greatest knowledge-giving tool ever created and they have access to knowledge that I just did not have when I was younger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestmannaeyjar, Slavery in England definitely continued for a couple of generations after the Norman Conquest and Bristol was a major export centre, though there were attempts to ban the export trade in particular (https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds has some interesting quotes from the time). Definitely didnt die out with the Romans. Just how much should Olusoga receive? What difference has it made? Kyle Rittenhouse, unlike the rest of their sorry asses, did something. In that moment, his interest in history overlapped. 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. It does not take people long to starve to death and slaves were paid for. Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates. Long after slavery ended in the British colonies, British people continued to lobby the American government to free their slaves. Fired by religious feeling, they embarked on a campaign of public education and political lobbying unprecedented in scale and revolutionary in nature. Maybe heard of Saint Balthild, seventh-century English lass sold into slavery, exported to the Continent, served in a palace and ended up marrying the Frankish King?). One in which enslaved people suffered and even died from malnutrition, as the economics of the slave trade meant that it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them than it was to provide them with food. But its still awful, even on a historical scale.. 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. Video, 00:02:30. Roman writers such as Pliny who chronicled or rather fabricated African life shaped perceptions of a continent populated by anthropophagi and other fantastic creatures, half-human, half-animal. Prof Darity and Ms Mullen outline that to eliminate the existing Black-White wealth gap an allocation of between $10 trillion and $12 trillion, or about $800,000 per black household, should be paid. 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.. This is indeed tu quoque. So he calls himself a Geordie. Although I would expect the Germans, and perhaps even the Japanese, to be happy they lost the war. It was such a brilliantly organised programme of mass protest that slavery was declared abolished in 1833: 46,000 slave owners were given 20m in compensation (17bn in todays money), the largest payout in British history and 40 per cent of all government spending that year. Would probably have taken your suggestion as a challenge. By this logic, we ought to sue the African American community. Inflaming the reader has no purpose relative to slavery. The New Statesmans weekly environment email on the politics, business and culture of the climate and nature crises - in your inbox every Thursday. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion?. One person who had a huge impact on Britain was Olaudah Equiano, an enslaved man who bought his freedom and wrote compellingly about his experiences. It wasnt always so & it may not be in the future. Fuck right off As a winning debating strategy. All in all your typical West African is far more likely to have ancestral connections to the slave trade than your typical Brit. Though I dont know where wed get $12 trillion in Confederate currency. 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. 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. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards.. The historian tells Michael Segalov about getting up early, reading George Orwell, taking his dog George for a walk, playing his guitar Cotton was a completely different slave economy. The race obsessed Department of Education goes to considerable lengths to distinguish Caribbeans and West Africans. The German survivors of Stalingrad were sent to camps and most of them worked to death. Certainly they killed them casually often for religious reasons. Different people can argue the toss from different viewpoints and perspectives but in many ways their arguments pass each other like ships in the night, because they havent all got nobodys got an absolute frame of reference to judge things with respect to. David Olusoga Historian, broadcaster and film-maker. In the UK its not white people enslaving blacks anymore, but Asians enslaving other Asians, as in Leicesters clothing sweatshops. I was uncomfortable using it. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has recently staged a play called the Meaning of Zong about the massacre of 132 enslaved Africans aboard the slave ship Zong in 1781 and the impact it had on Equiano. (As the first person to mention the Sokoto Caliphate ahh, forget it.). Ill disparage them. Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. 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. The government has said the "flexibility within the history curriculum means that there is the opportunity for teachers to teach about BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) history across a spectrum of themes and eras" so it did "not believe it was necessary to change the curriculum". 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. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. Tull played professional football for Northampton but instead of signing up for Glasgow Rangers, he enlisted. 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. Note, hes a renowned economist. 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. At the moment it seems to regarded as a good thing. Slaves were crowded in a new environment with new diseases. He is the author of the 2016 book Black and British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award 2017 and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2017. Had a vault for the more inflammatory pieces. The historian and producer said he wanted to. Black and British: A Forgotten History "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 can then give him the details of other descendants, he can apologise to and compensate. And so, equipped with the fruits of Islamic learning (new navigational instruments, books on astronomy and trigonometry), European explorers set sail for Africa to relieve the natives of their gold. His exposure to Nigerian culture seems quite limited. it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them That is not true. 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. They are now CM scum and couldnt care less about America. What has he got to say about that? You lost those two. Joining them is Psychologist and Lecturer at Lancaster University, Dr David Tod, for a fascinating conversation about the psychology of acting. They also ran a slave trade to the Ottoman empire and white slavery in the north without any help from Europeans. Check out the trailer for Peter Pan & Wendy, an upcoming live-action movie directed by David Lowery. 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. As for the future, the University of Manchester professor says younger generations give him hope. I learned the hard way. 7 years was the average working lifespan so it is said. Societies have had a long history of treating minorities harshly. And yet anti-black race riots broke out in 1948 in Liverpool and in 1958 in Nottingham and Londons Notting Hill. H istorian and broadcaster David Olusoga has been the face of a decolonial turn in British broadcasting that, in recent years, with series including the Bafta-winning Britain's Forgotten Slave. To me personally, this is the thing. Black history: Should it be part of the wider curriculum? I am of Ulster Scot heritage, who were originally John Knoxs Cumberland Presbyterians, VERY MUCH against slavery. 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. West Indians fought with the Allies more than a hundred were decorated. And even if you personally disagree with it, what would be the strongest argument for some form of legal settlement? The argument isnt whether historical slavery was right or wrong or who should accept responsibility for it. Very little sugar on the mainland. 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. 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