Africans rescued at sea by the RN were returned to W.A.to Land the British had bought in Sierra Leone. We established a town there called 'Freetown'. We took back at least 150,000 rescued slaves there. Those already sold? We set them free BUT could not return them to Africa. The whole of Africa's economy was based on Slavery. For 1,000 years plus Africans had sold slaves to the Arab world, then when Europeans appeared centuries later, they sold to them also BUT despite the vast numbers sold, they kept twice those numbers for themselves. Death stalked those slaves everyday. Their lives were cheap indeed. Yes, there were slaves in our Empire when we arrived. The Empire was usually one of Trade and we undertook not to interfere with the other countries rule. No doubt we probably did. Well we definitely did when slavery was Abolished in the whole of our Empire in 1833.
I am half British and half Zulu, I am also 53 so I have had considerable to to ponder the complexities of race and how our views have changed over time. Like it or not, slaves were property and to free them meant buying them no if's or but's if you wanted to remain within the rule of law. Note this was international law as slavery was embedded within every nation for thousands of years, it was the status quo. The key difference in America not buying them out is they had a civil war and them freeing them happened within their own boarders so they were able to pass a law enabling it while Britain had to negotiate with powers outside of it's boarders. The only people I care about in my family lineage are the ones that I actually knew, for me that extends back to my grandparents. Reaching back to the time of slavery would require you to go back 6 generations and to put that in perspective that if any of us goes back 6 generations that gives you 64 great great etc grandparents. No one knows those people, or their names or indeed anything about their lives but to somehow claim victimhood on their behalf is pure victimhood culture, ambulance chasing, a con. Go back far enough and WE ALL HAD murderers, rapists, pedos, slaves and slave owners in our lineage. So how far do we go back? and what crimes should we pursue? One thing that was true throughout our history, today and will be in the future is that humans evolved to seek advantage, we will do anything to get to the top including exploiting others. One last thing I never see addressed in these videos is why Britain never had slaves. It simply didn't need any. They had surfs to fill those roles. Ever wondered why so many Brits left for the US, Aus, NZ ect? Because it was really bad in the UK! The surfs that stayed became the current British population and to even suggest they should feel or be responsible for what happened generations before they were born is insanity
@bastiat It's really not complicated at all. There are a lot of 'pure bloods' on both sides that insist on making it so and focusing on our differences and referencing things they read about that once divided us. They avoid the 90% of what makes us the same. Ever wondered why no one uses the term harmony these days? MLK used to be the gold standard of race relations but he has now been silenced as he spoke of a colour blind future while the current narrative requires we view the world though the lens of colour. Some will even gaslight you and tell you it is impossible to be colour blind, when someone does that, alarm bells should ring as it means they are themselves are incapable of seeing past race. My English gran said to me when I was a teenager that the world will never be at peace with race until every one has family on both sides. She was right. Integration is critical. It is interesting in the UK that South African's made it their mission to move to good areas. My gran parents initially lived in 'ghettos' ie Brixton when they first came to the UK as it was cheap but they moved within a year despite barley being able to afford it. My gran told me she knew full well what living in a effectively segregated area (Apartheid) will impact the kids lives more than anything else. Both my grans were very smart!
It is worth noting that the debt that was taken to buyout those slaves was finally settled in... 2015. Every English person who paid taxes at least once before 2015 contributed at least some amount of their labor to the idea of abolishing slavery.
I read somewhere that the slave freed were also resettled. So they did not get money like the slave owner, but they were given house and freedom. They were not just dropped in the wild after being freed.
I think what people are trying to I say is that they paid for their freedom from the slavers, not paid reparations, and this debt came out of the English peoples taxes which was finally paid off in 2015. The English themselves were under Roman rule for approx 600 years and a lot were taken to Rome for hard labour but no one paid them reparations. So where would this all end if we all wanted reparations if distant ancestors back in history who were taken as slaves. We all would be suing each other but it would not benefit those who were the ones that actually suffered.
The English were enslaved at various times throughout early history. By the Irish who, along with the Vikings, ran the biggest slave market, out of Dublin, in western Europe: by the Romans, as you have said: by the Germanic Tribes who invaded England immediately after the Romans left: the the Danes etc who also raided England and Scotland: ill used by the conquering Normans when they came to Briton in 1066. By the Barbary Pirates of North Africa, for two hundred years, who raided our shores - taking whole villages of men, women and children who were treated exactly the same as black slaves - and stole and enslaved our fishermen off their own ships and even operated from an Island within the UK's Bristol Channel. I do not believe any nation was free of this atrocity - until the British began their Crusade to end slavery.
I understand your perspective about paying slaves when they were released but I must think that freedom for them was invaluable and the greatest reward one could imagine, being socially aknowledged to have the now basic human right of independence and personal sovereignty.. I doubt they would have asked for more.
£20million was the buyout costs to free the slaves. That doesn't include any of the costs of the ships, the navy seamen, the weaponry. £20,000,000 in 1833 was the equivalent of £2,184,631,578.95 in 2016. Money changes value over time. Britain was enslaved by Romans, who also enslaved other nations under the roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire enslaved others. The African tribal leaders and Kings enslaved other tribes. America chose not to emancipate its slaves but instead to slaughter one another in a civil war, which has left lasting impacts between the north and south, and was even defended by black slave owners too. To say that Britain and its people still have not paid enough is so disheartening. To say you never heard anyone accuse the British of being slavers in the same sentence as saying that we didn't also pay the slaves that were sold by African leaders to other nations like the portuguese and the Arabs and many more, leaves me devastated. If it had not been for the Britsh crusade across the world, slavery as a societal and legal norm would have taken centuries longer to be questioned and may not have been abolished in the widespread manner that it was. The fact modern day slavery still exists is proof that the human condition contains evil. China enslaves its own still, as does India, and others. It is not an issue of colour or race but power, greed and control.
In English law you cannot just seize someone's property, and slaves were considered 'chattels'. So, had we not 'purchased' the slaves to set them free, the minute we turned our backs, the slaves would have been enslaved again. We would have been caught up in legal cases everywhere, delaying the release of slaves elsewhere. This way the slaves themselves were quickly and legally set free and able to prove they were now free men, women and children. With that proof they would remain free even if they were 'caught' again by unscrupulous slavers. Often we gave money to released slaves, often released slaves would opt to stay and work for a wage with the people who had previously 'bought' them. We could not give money to the slaves themselves, because they were 'owned' by their purchaser, who would have simply taken it off them. We did what we could. We spent far more than our Empire wealth on this Crusade. Can you imagine how immense, how seemingly impossible a task it was for one nation to change the mindset of the whole World - that slavery was not moral or right, that one man should not be able to own another - just because 'the British' said so! After the first fifty years of trying to 'crush' the Slave Trade our Government asked the British people if they wanted them to carry on. The task was overwhelming. If we said 'Yes' the Government said it would have to raise our taxes to pay for Loans the Government would need to take out to continue. The British people said 'YES'. The British Royal Navy, the Government and its people joined together and worked on it's Crusade to end Slavery tirelessly for over l60 years. Our last patrol of the Coast of Africa was in 1970. The Government announced to the people in 2015 that the last payment of the Loan had been made.
Thank you for commenting. It is important top know all sides of history, for too long some of it have been kept hidden. You have a great day.. Take care.
i geuss back then they saw slaves [legally} as property and treated it like they were taking an object of value from them [many incured debt to buy slaves] it was a very cold emotionless act based on the rule of law and the best thing they could offer the slaves was freedom its complex and f'#~@d up i dont think we will ever understand from our modern comfortable perspective why people in the past did what they did just try to remember we all set an example for future generations with our acts and omissions now
It is worth noting that the debt that was taken to buyout those slaves was finally settled in... 2015. Every English person who paid taxes at least once before 2015 contributed at least some amount of their labor to the idea of abolishing slavery. While the idea of paying slave owners for "their property" is morally dubious today the world was very different back then. And arguably the British were much smarter as the buyout left no bad feelings, no civil wars and no lasting legacy of racism to an extent it did in America (excluding the sick f**ks in South Africa of course). But one can easily explain the same behavior patterns and our reaction with today moral issues (without comparing those issues to slavery as those are incomparable). Imagine that the government would decide to ban all cars starting tomorrow because of global warming. Would you be ok with that? I doubt it. You would at least demand a compensation and an alternative. But it is so hard to imagine people 2 or 3 hundred years later being aghast at that and saying "Those planet-killers deserved nothing! They should be punished instead." Where and when you sit determines your point of view.
- Throughout most of History and places slavery existed, so it was "normal" for them. Humans adapt to whatever environment they live in and it is their "normality". - People who have power over others tend to abuse of it. A lot of people given the role of slave master would quickly display abusive behavior toward "his" slaves. - Because of Hollywood, we tend to think that every slave was badly treated, working at a US Southern plantation and every master was an asshole. In reality "slave" conditions (we even sometimes debate about what status was slavery and what wasnt as the borders aren't totally clear) varied greatly and some did have better conditions than "free" people. I probably forgot many things but I think that ideological effervescence of the XVIIIe century, the industrial revolution and the betterment of the free people's conditions played major roles in the end of slavery and seeing it as "not normal".
As a british national who has generations of family going back over a 100 years that have paid out of our own pockets, probably thousands and thousands of pounds by each british family to give people alive today and several generations of their family the freedom they now have and their family have had just for those people to tell us it wasnt enough and they now want more is a real kick in the teeth. We didn't enslave you or your family, but we actually put our hands in our pockets and paid towards their freedom, and they're slapping us in the face for it . Luckily its not the majority and most recognise what britain and british people have sacrificed for them and their families. We dont want thanks, we dont want to be put on a pedestal, we just to be appreciated for our families sacrifice and our hard work because we have actually worked to contribute to their families and their freedom .
All due respect n much love, but if it weren't for the European colonizers, slavery would most likely still be happening today. It was the colonizers, n them alone, that decided slavery was wrong, on moral grounds, n decided that NO ONE should do it, despite the fact that the entire rest of the world saw nothing at all wrong with it, n had no plans to stop at all. Europe n their offshoot nations, like the US, did their colonizer thing, n went around the entire world n FORCED their beliefs n ideologies about slavery on the entire rest of the world... so, people need to really rethink their animosity n ridiculousness about colonization....
Paying the slave owners was a legal and not a moral thing. The government was under no obligation to change terms of service, and there was no such things as minimum wage laws. Slaves were property like houses, land, factories, ships or any other property. If the government can take one person's property without compensation it can take anyone's property without compensation. In war there is an exception, property used for war, called contraband, can be taken. Because slaves were often used to build fortifications in the South they were labeled as contraband and declared forfeit in areas still in rebellion as of Jan 1, 1863. After the war slaves in the 4 slave states that did not rebel and slaves in areas, like New Orleans, that were under union occupation prior to Jan 1 were not freed at the end of the war. Some would be freed by the individual states but the remainder would only be freed by the passage and ratification of the thirteenth amendment in December of 1865. These were not the last slaves recognized by the federal government. The 5 civilized tribes, in areas under the control of the federal government, had slaves allowed by treaties. The treaties would be renegotiated during 1866 ending legally recognized slavery.
Very astute comments. Slavery during this period is a complex issue, but clearly West Africa and East Africa suffered exploitation by different groups of slavers. I wonder what was happening in Asia during this period. The British efforts to suppress slavery was also connected to their expansion as an empire, which is not addressed by Sowell. The idea of reparations is very timely. I recall that France forced Haiti to pay compensation for slaves. This helped keep Haiti mired in poverty for centuries.
Very true about Haiti. People dismiss them as unable to govern themselves without take a look at the history that got them to this point. Thank you for commenting.
Please don't forget - and I am sure you haven't - that Africa was the white man's grave at this time and Europeans, with the exception of the Portuguese, didn't enter West Africa, but waited on the sea shore for the Africans to bring the slaves to them where they negotiated a price. Also, as you no doubt know, the British Empire - unlike other Empires - was, in general, based on mutually beneficial trading agreements and not by conquest.
i get that its a raw deal that the slave owners got paid and the slaves just got their freedom but its a tough call as the British valued the rule of law more than anything else and was a major factor in their success; circumventing this even for the most moral cause was simply not a consideration. Also theres not major backlash over the Arab slave trade because there are no surviving ancestors of the enslaved; slaves were castrated
The Americans didn't pay slave owners to pay for the slaves' freedom. The US decided to have a war. They couldn't afford paying the owners so it had to be war! Maybe valuing money over human lives? Not sure how black slave owners fitted into that though.
Just dawned on me there when you were saying America didn't compensate the slave owners in the states for the loss of thier slaves, and England have being paying back the slave owners up until last payment 2015.....… Would that be a case of pretty much rewarding themselves ? Like jobs for the boys...the government bringing it into power to pay the owners ..which in alot of cases would be the rich upper class of England kind of keeping it within the family !! I could be wrong..but I also could be right ! I shall have to look into that.
First of all, the British paid the slave owners the cost of the slaves they owned to set the slaves free and to do so quickly. That was the only compensation they received. Yes there were people in Parliament who had Plantations in the West Indies and those people would have fought the Abolitionists in Parliament to keep the status quo. That is reflected in the time it took (twenty years) to pass the Law to Abolish Slavery in 1807. There is a misunderstanding here. It is not a case of 'pretty much rewarding themselves ......... keeping it in the family' as you suggest. Britain bought the slaves from ALL slave owners, including the very many black slave owners. Slaves were bought from countries all around the World. For instance the British Government subsidised the factory workers wages in the factories of Brazil for quite a time, so that Brazil did not go back on their word and use slaves. The British bribed other countries Governments with money and favourable Trading Agreements if they signed up to abolish slavery - the French and Portuguese among them. The British invented the Industrial Revolution, the modern world if you like, and sent their inventions all around the world to ease the need for slaves, instead of keeping their inventions to themselves and growing in enormous power and wealth. The British bought land in Sierra Leone, W. Africa, so they had a safe place to take the slaves they'd freed from slavers ships. They helped those slaves settle there and helped them build a new town - the released slaves called it Freetown. They paid sailors working in terrible conditions - which were deadly to white men - money for every slave they freed. This list is endless. The British Government and it's Royal Navy fought endlessly, tirelessly, for years, to end slavery around the world - in the face of a World that said, 'Why? Why are you doing this. We need slaves, everyone has slaves, what's the big deal. Slavery is thousands of years old?' Why should we stop just because Britain says so? After 50 years the British Government asked their people if they should stop. The task was endless and there was still so much to do and, if they continued their Crusade Against Slavery the Government would have to take out Loans to continue AND that would mean higher taxes for everyone. The people said, 'yes, carry on' and 'yes, we will pay higher taxes'. You are wrong if you think this was a gravy train for the rich. Once the slaves had been bought from slave owners that was the end of any money paid to slave owners. The British Navy, having stopped the slave trade on the West Coast of Africa by 1870 then sailed around that Continent and began their fight again - this time against the Arab Slave Trade. Many British lives were lost in the Royal Navy, many black ex slaves, who joined the fight with Royal Navy after being freed, also lost their lives trying to save other slaves from slavers. It had taken 67 years or so to stop the W. African slave trade, it took another 100 years to do the same on the East Coast of Africa and beyond. The British Royal Navy finished their last patrol in the 1970's. The British Government announced to the people of the UK in 2015 that they had paid the last instalment of the Loans taken out for the Crusade to End Slavery. Every single person in the UK, who paid taxes before that date, had contributed to a Crusade to free peoples they had never seen or met, from countries they knew nothing about - just because they believed one man should not be allowed to own another. I think that is rather remarkable and very fine. If the British hadn't done what they did, slavery would have just carried on the way it had for thousands of years. You would still be living in a world where slavery was accepted as the norm. You might even be a slave yourself. If you were you wouldn't even question who was lining whose nest as they struck off your shackles and set you free. I am upset by your opinions - for all those who died in the fight, for the effort and hardship those in the Royal Navy endured to set the slaves free around the World for the women in the cotton mills of England that suffered great hardship and some starvation, because they refused to process American cotton picked by slaves - and lost their jobs. What other mill owners would take them on? Everything the British Government did, that the Royal Navy fought for, the clever inventors of the Industrial Revolution that gives you the life you live today, the British people who supported the Crusade and paid higher taxes willingly, the slaves saved and those in the following generations no longer enslaved and now living in freedom dismissed in a thoughtless paragraph. I only hope you are not British. It would be easier if you are not British!
@@JJ-of1ir well JJ, The British Empire was made by or of the back of conquering slaves and territory ,it is what made Britain what it was during its extensive prolific slave trade..She used the People of each place as cannon fodder, to acquire more territories....and to slave the land and produce..she ruined those people's lives, their culture. Belief, made them speak English , sever punishment if caught speaking in mother tongue.,..misplaced thousands from one land and brought to other lands ..... Sign of the times other people with morals began talking about abolition and of how wrong on every level it was... It was becoming way way to expensive for blighty to try continue with agricultural way if the slaves.........people were fighting for their encloses to be brought up to human levels, for their own Religion and culture to be practiced... plantation producing too vast amounts of sugar and price at all time low...uprising plus slave population more than colonists....so the British slave owners in the British Colonies would only go along with the abolition if they were compensated ... The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act abolished, as the name suggests, slavery itself. A Treasury so loose with its facts might explain something about the state of the British economy. Worse, however, was the claim that British taxpayers helped “buy freedom for slaves”. The government certainly shelled out £20m (about £16bn today) in 1833. Not to free slaves but to line the pockets of 46,000 British slave owners as “recompense” for losing their “property”. Having grown rich on the profits of an obscene trade, slave owners grew richer still from its ending. That, scandalously, was what the taxpayer was paying for until 2015. The Treasury deleted its tweet on Saturday morning. It is, however, part of a long tradition of the British authorities playing down their central role in the transatlantic slave trade, while claiming credit for ending slavery. It was not Britain but slaves themselves and radicals in Europe who began the struggle against enslavement. Nevertheless, the “moral capital” of abolitionism, as historian Katie Donington observes, continues to provide “a means of redeeming Britain’s troubling colonial past”. Above article on subject...that cotton was coming from sharecroppers, and plantations with Africans, Irish, German and polish who were owned by mainly British owners,...think gov dud deal with Gandhi to get cheaper from India......BUT, Totally agree those were very brave morally strong workers in the cotton mill.,...in the end mill owners get product cheaper It all boils down to money and greed unfortunately, not much changed today.....
I am sad that it is coming back. All that work for not. We need to go to work ones more. The old world is in love with slavery it can make a $200 Iphone. You pay workers it be $700 Iphone.
Yeah, Grant the authors explanation for a moment, But ask the next logical questions, Slavery was very much profitable to begin with. Otherwise it would never have reached the level it did. So granting it was not profitable later on. The question becomes, Why was it becoming economically unviable? , Falling customer numbers because of moral changes being driven by Abolitionist's and rising expenses due to lost cargoes and ships seized by naval patrols. Would be a large and obvious part of it.. lol. I think the book author is focused on their theory, And excluding all other factors, Nothing happens in a vacuum as the saying goes. It's all connected..
This is true only for the western world where those moral changes actually happened. In the middle east, Asia and Africa there were no such moral changes which is quite evident by the fact that slavery still exists in the Middle East and in Africa. In fact even at the absolute peaks of the Atlantic slave trade the number of slaves taken to Americas where just a tiny fraction of the overall African slave trade. Slavery was and still is profitable in the Middle East and Africa. Thus in many places in Africa slavery was abolished only when colonial powers took control. Only the "white man" civilization invented the idea that slavery is morally wrong and should be abolished. And only the military might of colonial powers made it possible to eradicate it in other parts of the world. No other civilization or peoples though there is anything wrong with it. They thought the strong lord over the weak and that is the order of the world. People who complained about slavery were either slaves or those in danger of enslavement and the reason they complained was not because they wanted to abolish the slavery but rather to change their social status to become the enslavers. As evident in the fact that a large proportion of free people of color in US where commercial slave owners.
The Spartan's had slaves that worked the farms so the Spartan men could train all day every day to be the best fighting force the World has ever seen. Before the Europeans and Arabs, African tribes took slaves as a symbol of prestige. Multitude of reasons to have slaves throughout Human history.
Perhaps the inventions that formed the British Industrial Revolution had something to do with it. The Industrial Revolution mechanised many industries, like cotton and other textiles for instance, the flying shuttle and so on. Factories full of new machines took over the tasks of many workers, needing only one worker to two or more machines to supervise, where once hundreds had worked at home in their own cottages. It was a very hard time for British workers, but such ideas reduced the necessity for slave workers around the Globe. The British inventions were sent to Europe, its Empire and then to the Americas and so on. Steam power pumps, steam driven Railways were also exported to the Empire, Europe, Asia - well everywhere really. I doubt there was any moderately developed country on the globe that hadn't built a railway within 10 years of the British inventing them.
The BRITISH CRUSADE AGAINST THE SLAVERY TRADE FOR EVERYONE ELSE we did not after go to war against others The French flag was not used on British Ships...or the American flag
British Crusade against Slavery.
ruclips.net/video/RMv1G99AeqI/видео.html
Africans rescued at sea by the RN were returned to W.A.to Land the British had bought in Sierra Leone. We established a town there called 'Freetown'. We took back at least 150,000 rescued slaves there. Those already sold? We set them free BUT could not return them to Africa. The whole of Africa's economy was based on Slavery. For 1,000 years plus Africans had sold slaves to the Arab world, then when Europeans appeared centuries later, they sold to them also BUT despite the vast numbers sold, they kept twice those numbers for themselves. Death stalked those slaves everyday. Their lives were cheap indeed. Yes, there were slaves in our Empire when we arrived. The Empire was usually one of Trade and we undertook not to interfere with the other countries rule. No doubt we probably did. Well we definitely did when slavery was Abolished in the whole of our Empire in 1833.
I am half British and half Zulu, I am also 53 so I have had considerable to to ponder the complexities of race and how our views have changed over time.
Like it or not, slaves were property and to free them meant buying them no if's or but's if you wanted to remain within the rule of law. Note this was international law as slavery was embedded within every nation for thousands of years, it was the status quo. The key difference in America not buying them out is they had a civil war and them freeing them happened within their own boarders so they were able to pass a law enabling it while Britain had to negotiate with powers outside of it's boarders.
The only people I care about in my family lineage are the ones that I actually knew, for me that extends back to my grandparents. Reaching back to the time of slavery would require you to go back 6 generations and to put that in perspective that if any of us goes back 6 generations that gives you 64 great great etc grandparents. No one knows those people, or their names or indeed anything about their lives but to somehow claim victimhood on their behalf is pure victimhood culture, ambulance chasing, a con. Go back far enough and WE ALL HAD murderers, rapists, pedos, slaves and slave owners in our lineage. So how far do we go back? and what crimes should we pursue?
One thing that was true throughout our history, today and will be in the future is that humans evolved to seek advantage, we will do anything to get to the top including exploiting others.
One last thing I never see addressed in these videos is why Britain never had slaves. It simply didn't need any. They had surfs to fill those roles. Ever wondered why so many Brits left for the US, Aus, NZ ect? Because it was really bad in the UK! The surfs that stayed became the current British population and to even suggest they should feel or be responsible for what happened generations before they were born is insanity
Thank you for commenting.
@bastiat It's really not complicated at all. There are a lot of 'pure bloods' on both sides that insist on making it so and focusing on our differences and referencing things they read about that once divided us. They avoid the 90% of what makes us the same. Ever wondered why no one uses the term harmony these days? MLK used to be the gold standard of race relations but he has now been silenced as he spoke of a colour blind future while the current narrative requires we view the world though the lens of colour. Some will even gaslight you and tell you it is impossible to be colour blind, when someone does that, alarm bells should ring as it means they are themselves are incapable of seeing past race.
My English gran said to me when I was a teenager that the world will never be at peace with race until every one has family on both sides. She was right.
Integration is critical. It is interesting in the UK that South African's made it their mission to move to good areas. My gran parents initially lived in 'ghettos' ie Brixton when they first came to the UK as it was cheap but they moved within a year despite barley being able to afford it. My gran told me she knew full well what living in a effectively segregated area (Apartheid) will impact the kids lives more than anything else. Both my grans were very smart!
It is worth noting that the debt that was taken to buyout those slaves was finally settled in... 2015. Every English person who paid taxes at least once before 2015 contributed at least some amount of their labor to the idea of abolishing slavery.
I read somewhere that the slave freed were also resettled. So they did not get money like the slave owner, but they were given house and freedom. They were not just dropped in the wild after being freed.
Although the slaves did not receive anything… you could say the british government paid for there freedom
Slavery is still going strong in Cambodia. It is terrible.
I think what people are trying to I say is that they paid for their freedom from the slavers, not paid reparations, and this debt came out of the English peoples taxes which was finally paid off in 2015.
The English themselves were under Roman rule for approx 600 years and a lot were taken to Rome for hard labour but no one paid them reparations. So where would this all end if we all wanted reparations if distant ancestors back in history who were taken as slaves.
We all would be suing each other but it would not benefit those who were the ones that actually suffered.
The English were enslaved at various times throughout early history. By the Irish who, along with the Vikings, ran the biggest slave market, out of Dublin, in western Europe: by the Romans, as you have said: by the Germanic Tribes who invaded England immediately after the Romans left: the the Danes etc who also raided England and Scotland: ill used by the conquering Normans when they came to Briton in 1066. By the Barbary Pirates of North Africa, for two hundred years, who raided our shores - taking whole villages of men, women and children who were treated exactly the same as black slaves - and stole and enslaved our fishermen off their own ships and even operated from an Island within the UK's Bristol Channel. I do not believe any nation was free of this atrocity - until the British began their Crusade to end slavery.
I understand your perspective about paying slaves when they were released but I must think that freedom for them was invaluable and the greatest reward one could imagine, being socially aknowledged to have the now basic human right of independence and personal sovereignty.. I doubt they would have asked for more.
£20million was the buyout costs to free the slaves. That doesn't include any of the costs of the ships, the navy seamen, the weaponry. £20,000,000 in 1833 was the equivalent of £2,184,631,578.95 in 2016.
Money changes value over time.
Britain was enslaved by Romans, who also enslaved other nations under the roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire enslaved others. The African tribal leaders and Kings enslaved other tribes.
America chose not to emancipate its slaves but instead to slaughter one another in a civil war, which has left lasting impacts between the north and south, and was even defended by black slave owners too.
To say that Britain and its people still have not paid enough is so disheartening. To say you never heard anyone accuse the British of being slavers in the same sentence as saying that we didn't also pay the slaves that were sold by African leaders to other nations like the portuguese and the Arabs and many more, leaves me devastated.
If it had not been for the Britsh crusade across the world, slavery as a societal and legal norm would have taken centuries longer to be questioned and may not have been abolished in the widespread manner that it was.
The fact modern day slavery still exists is proof that the human condition contains evil. China enslaves its own still, as does India, and others. It is not an issue of colour or race but power, greed and control.
In English law you cannot just seize someone's property, and slaves were considered 'chattels'. So, had we not 'purchased' the slaves to set them free, the minute we turned our backs, the slaves would have been enslaved again. We would have been caught up in legal cases everywhere, delaying the release of slaves elsewhere. This way the slaves themselves were quickly and legally set free and able to prove they were now free men, women and children. With that proof they would remain free even if they were 'caught' again by unscrupulous slavers. Often we gave money to released slaves, often released slaves would opt to stay and work for a wage with the people who had previously 'bought' them. We could not give money to the slaves themselves, because they were 'owned' by their purchaser, who would have simply taken it off them.
We did what we could. We spent far more than our Empire wealth on this Crusade. Can you imagine how immense, how seemingly impossible a task it was for one nation to change the mindset of the whole World - that slavery was not moral or right, that one man should not be able to own another - just because 'the British' said so! After the first fifty years of trying to 'crush' the Slave Trade our Government asked the British people if they wanted them to carry on. The task was overwhelming. If we said 'Yes' the Government said it would have to raise our taxes to pay for Loans the Government would need to take out to continue. The British people said 'YES'. The British Royal Navy, the Government and its people joined together and worked on it's Crusade to end Slavery tirelessly for over l60 years. Our last patrol of the Coast of Africa was in 1970. The Government announced to the people in 2015 that the last payment of the Loan had been made.
Thank you for commenting. It is important top know all sides of history, for too long some of it have been kept hidden. You have a great day.. Take care.
@@MrGiant Thank you. You have a great day too.
G'Day from rural South Australia, I find the Barbary wars & slavery interesting
i geuss back then they saw slaves [legally} as property and treated it like they were taking an object of value from them [many incured debt to buy slaves] it was a very cold emotionless act based on the rule of law and the best thing they could offer the slaves was freedom its complex and f'#~@d up i dont think we will ever understand from our modern comfortable perspective why people in the past did what they did just try to remember we all set an example for future generations with our acts and omissions now
Thank you for commenting. Have a great day.
It is worth noting that the debt that was taken to buyout those slaves was finally settled in... 2015. Every English person who paid taxes at least once before 2015 contributed at least some amount of their labor to the idea of abolishing slavery.
While the idea of paying slave owners for "their property" is morally dubious today the world was very different back then. And arguably the British were much smarter as the buyout left no bad feelings, no civil wars and no lasting legacy of racism to an extent it did in America (excluding the sick f**ks in South Africa of course).
But one can easily explain the same behavior patterns and our reaction with today moral issues (without comparing those issues to slavery as those are incomparable).
Imagine that the government would decide to ban all cars starting tomorrow because of global warming. Would you be ok with that? I doubt it. You would at least demand a compensation and an alternative. But it is so hard to imagine people 2 or 3 hundred years later being aghast at that and saying "Those planet-killers deserved nothing! They should be punished instead." Where and when you sit determines your point of view.
- Throughout most of History and places slavery existed, so it was "normal" for them. Humans adapt to whatever environment they live in and it is their "normality".
- People who have power over others tend to abuse of it. A lot of people given the role of slave master would quickly display abusive behavior toward "his" slaves.
- Because of Hollywood, we tend to think that every slave was badly treated, working at a US Southern plantation and every master was an asshole. In reality "slave" conditions (we even sometimes debate about what status was slavery and what wasnt as the borders aren't totally clear) varied greatly and some did have better conditions than "free" people.
I probably forgot many things but I think that ideological effervescence of the XVIIIe century, the industrial revolution and the betterment of the free people's conditions played major roles in the end of slavery and seeing it as "not normal".
As a british national who has generations of family going back over a 100 years that have paid out of our own pockets, probably thousands and thousands of pounds by each british family to give people alive today and several generations of their family the freedom they now have and their family have had just for those people to tell us it wasnt enough and they now want more is a real kick in the teeth. We didn't enslave you or your family, but we actually put our hands in our pockets and paid towards their freedom, and they're slapping us in the face for it . Luckily its not the majority and most recognise what britain and british people have sacrificed for them and their families. We dont want thanks, we dont want to be put on a pedestal, we just to be appreciated for our families sacrifice and our hard work because we have actually worked to contribute to their families and their freedom .
All due respect n much love, but if it weren't for the European colonizers, slavery would most likely still be happening today. It was the colonizers, n them alone, that decided slavery was wrong, on moral grounds, n decided that NO ONE should do it, despite the fact that the entire rest of the world saw nothing at all wrong with it, n had no plans to stop at all. Europe n their offshoot nations, like the US, did their colonizer thing, n went around the entire world n FORCED their beliefs n ideologies about slavery on the entire rest of the world... so, people need to really rethink their animosity n ridiculousness about colonization....
Paying the slave owners was a legal and not a moral thing. The government was under no obligation to change terms of service, and there was no such things as minimum wage laws. Slaves were property like houses, land, factories, ships or any other property. If the government can take one person's property without compensation it can take anyone's property without compensation. In war there is an exception, property used for war, called contraband, can be taken. Because slaves were often used to build fortifications in the South they were labeled as contraband and declared forfeit in areas still in rebellion as of Jan 1, 1863. After the war slaves in the 4 slave states that did not rebel and slaves in areas, like New Orleans, that were under union occupation prior to Jan 1 were not freed at the end of the war. Some would be freed by the individual states but the remainder would only be freed by the passage and ratification of the thirteenth amendment in December of 1865. These were not the last slaves recognized by the federal government. The 5 civilized tribes, in areas under the control of the federal government, had slaves allowed by treaties. The treaties would be renegotiated during 1866 ending legally recognized slavery.
Thank you forthe information.
Very astute comments. Slavery during this period is a complex issue, but clearly West Africa and East Africa suffered exploitation by different groups of slavers. I wonder what was happening in Asia during this period. The British efforts to suppress slavery was also connected to their expansion as an empire, which is not addressed by Sowell.
The idea of reparations is very timely. I recall that France forced Haiti to pay compensation for slaves. This helped keep Haiti mired in poverty for centuries.
Very true about Haiti. People dismiss them as unable to govern themselves without take a look at the history that got them to this point. Thank you for commenting.
Please don't forget - and I am sure you haven't - that Africa was the white man's grave at this time and Europeans, with the exception of the Portuguese, didn't enter West Africa, but waited on the sea shore for the Africans to bring the slaves to them where they negotiated a price. Also, as you no doubt know, the British Empire - unlike other Empires - was, in general, based on mutually beneficial trading agreements and not by conquest.
i get that its a raw deal that the slave owners got paid and the slaves just got their freedom but its a tough call as the British valued the rule of law more than anything else and was a major factor in their success; circumventing this even for the most moral cause was simply not a consideration. Also theres not major backlash over the Arab slave trade because there are no surviving ancestors of the enslaved; slaves were castrated
The Americans didn't pay slave owners to pay for the slaves' freedom. The US decided to have a war. They couldn't afford paying the owners so it had to be war! Maybe valuing money over human lives? Not sure how black slave owners fitted into that though.
The tv series Roots caused a lot of blame whithin the black community many people believed it to be true
Just dawned on me there when you were saying America didn't compensate the slave owners in the states for the loss of thier slaves, and England have being paying back the slave owners up until last payment 2015.....… Would that be a case of pretty much rewarding themselves ? Like jobs for the boys...the government bringing it into power to pay the owners ..which in alot of cases would be the rich upper class of England kind of keeping it within the family !! I could be wrong..but I also could be right ! I shall have to look into that.
That could well be the case. Something to look at there. It seems like the money circulate at the top.
First of all, the British paid the slave owners the cost of the slaves they owned to set the slaves free and to do so quickly. That was the only compensation they received. Yes there were people in Parliament who had Plantations in the West Indies and those people would have fought the Abolitionists in Parliament to keep the status quo. That is reflected in the time it took (twenty years) to pass the Law to Abolish Slavery in 1807.
There is a misunderstanding here. It is not a case of 'pretty much rewarding themselves ......... keeping it in the family' as you suggest. Britain bought the slaves from ALL slave owners, including the very many black slave owners. Slaves were bought from countries all around the World. For instance the British Government subsidised the factory workers wages in the factories of Brazil for quite a time, so that Brazil did not go back on their word and use slaves. The British bribed other countries Governments with money and favourable Trading Agreements if they signed up to abolish slavery - the French and Portuguese among them.
The British invented the Industrial Revolution, the modern world if you like, and sent their inventions all around the world to ease the need for slaves, instead of keeping their inventions to themselves and growing in enormous power and wealth. The British bought land in Sierra Leone, W. Africa, so they had a safe place to take the slaves they'd freed from slavers ships. They helped those slaves settle there and helped them build a new town - the released slaves called it Freetown. They paid sailors working in terrible conditions - which were deadly to white men - money for every slave they freed. This list is endless.
The British Government and it's Royal Navy fought endlessly, tirelessly, for years, to end slavery around the world - in the face of a World that said, 'Why? Why are you doing this. We need slaves, everyone has slaves, what's the big deal. Slavery is thousands of years old?' Why should we stop just because Britain says so? After 50 years the British Government asked their people if they should stop. The task was endless and there was still so much to do and, if they continued their Crusade Against Slavery the Government would have to take out Loans to continue AND that would mean higher taxes for everyone. The people said, 'yes, carry on' and 'yes, we will pay higher taxes'.
You are wrong if you think this was a gravy train for the rich. Once the slaves had been bought from slave owners that was the end of any money paid to slave owners. The British Navy, having stopped the slave trade on the West Coast of Africa by 1870 then sailed around that Continent and began their fight again - this time against the Arab Slave Trade. Many British lives were lost in the Royal Navy, many black ex slaves, who joined the fight with Royal Navy after being freed, also lost their lives trying to save other slaves from slavers. It had taken 67 years or so to stop the W. African slave trade, it took another 100 years to do the same on the East Coast of Africa and beyond. The British Royal Navy finished their last patrol in the 1970's.
The British Government announced to the people of the UK in 2015 that they had paid the last instalment of the Loans taken out for the Crusade to End Slavery. Every single person in the UK, who paid taxes before that date, had contributed to a Crusade to free peoples they had never seen or met, from countries they knew nothing about - just because they believed one man should not be allowed to own another. I think that is rather remarkable and very fine.
If the British hadn't done what they did, slavery would have just carried on the way it had for thousands of years. You would still be living in a world where slavery was accepted as the norm. You might even be a slave yourself. If you were you wouldn't even question who was lining whose nest as they struck off your shackles and set you free. I am upset by your opinions - for all those who died in the fight, for the effort and hardship those in the Royal Navy endured to set the slaves free around the World for the women in the cotton mills of England that suffered great hardship and some starvation, because they refused to process American cotton picked by slaves - and lost their jobs. What other mill owners would take them on?
Everything the British Government did, that the Royal Navy fought for, the clever inventors of the Industrial Revolution that gives you the life you live today, the British people who supported the Crusade and paid higher taxes willingly, the slaves saved and those in the following generations no longer enslaved and now living in freedom dismissed in a thoughtless paragraph. I only hope you are not British. It would be easier if you are not British!
@@JJ-of1ir well JJ, The British Empire was made by or of the back of conquering slaves and territory ,it is what made Britain what it was during its extensive prolific slave trade..She used the People of each place as cannon fodder, to acquire more territories....and to slave the land and produce..she ruined those people's lives, their culture. Belief, made them speak English , sever punishment if caught speaking in mother tongue.,..misplaced thousands from one land and brought to other lands .....
Sign of the times other people with morals began talking about abolition and of how wrong on every level it was... It was becoming way way to expensive for blighty to try continue with agricultural way if the slaves.........people were fighting for their encloses to be brought up to human levels, for their own Religion and culture to be practiced... plantation producing too vast amounts of sugar and price at all time low...uprising plus slave population more than colonists....so the British slave owners in the British Colonies would only go along with the abolition if they were compensated ...
The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act abolished, as the name suggests, slavery itself. A Treasury so loose with its facts might explain something about the state of the British economy. Worse, however, was the claim that British taxpayers helped “buy freedom for slaves”. The government certainly shelled out £20m (about £16bn today) in 1833. Not to free slaves but to line the pockets of 46,000 British slave owners as “recompense” for losing their “property”. Having grown rich on the profits of an obscene trade, slave owners grew richer still from its ending. That, scandalously, was what the taxpayer was paying for until 2015.
The Treasury deleted its tweet on Saturday morning. It is, however, part of a long tradition of the British authorities playing down their central role in the transatlantic slave trade, while claiming credit for ending slavery. It was not Britain but slaves themselves and radicals in Europe who began the struggle against enslavement. Nevertheless, the “moral capital” of abolitionism, as historian Katie Donington observes, continues to provide “a means of redeeming Britain’s troubling colonial past”.
Above article on subject...that cotton was coming from sharecroppers, and plantations with Africans, Irish, German and polish who were owned by mainly British owners,...think gov dud deal with Gandhi to get cheaper from India......BUT, Totally agree those were very brave morally strong workers in the cotton mill.,...in the end mill owners get product cheaper
It all boils down to money and greed unfortunately, not much changed today.....
I am sad that it is coming back. All that work for not. We need to go to work ones more. The old world is in love with slavery it can make a $200 Iphone. You pay workers it be $700 Iphone.
Yeah, Grant the authors explanation for a moment, But ask the next logical questions, Slavery was very much profitable to begin with. Otherwise it would never have reached the level it did. So granting it was not profitable later on. The question becomes, Why was it becoming economically unviable? , Falling customer numbers because of moral changes being driven by Abolitionist's and rising expenses due to lost cargoes and ships seized by naval patrols. Would be a large and obvious part of it.. lol. I think the book author is focused on their theory, And excluding all other factors, Nothing happens in a vacuum as the saying goes. It's all connected..
This is true only for the western world where those moral changes actually happened. In the middle east, Asia and Africa there were no such moral changes which is quite evident by the fact that slavery still exists in the Middle East and in Africa. In fact even at the absolute peaks of the Atlantic slave trade the number of slaves taken to Americas where just a tiny fraction of the overall African slave trade. Slavery was and still is profitable in the Middle East and Africa. Thus in many places in Africa slavery was abolished only when colonial powers took control. Only the "white man" civilization invented the idea that slavery is morally wrong and should be abolished. And only the military might of colonial powers made it possible to eradicate it in other parts of the world. No other civilization or peoples though there is anything wrong with it. They thought the strong lord over the weak and that is the order of the world. People who complained about slavery were either slaves or those in danger of enslavement and the reason they complained was not because they wanted to abolish the slavery but rather to change their social status to become the enslavers. As evident in the fact that a large proportion of free people of color in US where commercial slave owners.
The Spartan's had slaves that worked the farms so the Spartan men could train all day every day to be the best fighting force the World has ever seen. Before the Europeans and Arabs, African tribes took slaves as a symbol of prestige. Multitude of reasons to have slaves throughout Human history.
Perhaps the inventions that formed the British Industrial Revolution had something to do with it. The Industrial Revolution mechanised many industries, like cotton and other textiles for instance, the flying shuttle and so on. Factories full of new machines took over the tasks of many workers, needing only one worker to two or more machines to supervise, where once hundreds had worked at home in their own cottages. It was a very hard time for British workers, but such ideas reduced the necessity for slave workers around the Globe. The British inventions were sent to Europe, its Empire and then to the Americas and so on. Steam power pumps, steam driven Railways were also exported to the Empire, Europe, Asia - well everywhere really. I doubt there was any moderately developed country on the globe that hadn't built a railway within 10 years of the British inventing them.
If someone can make $ they will go for it.
Then people should get money 💰 for what we did and people that lost people
freeing the slaves
The BRITISH CRUSADE AGAINST THE SLAVERY TRADE FOR EVERYONE ELSE
we did not after go to war against others
The French flag was not used on British
Ships...or the American flag