Earl Grey is someone I consider to be an absolute mad lad. He assisted in abolishing slavery twice (Foreign secretary in 1807 and PM in 1833), as well as starting the process for a fair and balanced government. As well as the fact that he solved all his problems by threatening to leave. Eventually fully quitting when problems with Ireland occurred, as they do. I'd also like to say he had 16 legitimate children, and spent equal time in government and with family.
@@Renaissance_Kamikaze That would be his father, also known as Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey. He's most known as 'No Flint Grey' during the American Revolutionary War, where during an infiltration of a fort, he told his soldiers to not use the flint in their muskets and instead their bayonets, reducing the noise and light by the muskets. In the end he claimed the fort.
Just to clarify, the English slaveship “Zong”was originaly a Dutch slaveship called “Zorg” which does translate to ‘care’ in dutch, but also to ‘burden’ and/or ‘worry’ depending on it’s use. “Zong” in dutch is the past tense op the english “Singing”, “Sang” Not that this detail is of any importance to the story.
Neat, until you said Dutch it sounded like a villain from a sci-fi universe, but I now immediately see the relationship to German "Sorgen", which has the same meanings.
Sounds as if these Tories were surley put out of power in the coming years and fell into obscurity with the feudal lords losing power. Anything else would be crazy.
As a Canadian who is a nerd over our constitution, this is a very fun series to watch, since our constitution uses a lot of the same documents / Constitutional Conventions but also added some federalist twists. Thank you for putting this together!
I've only discovered your channel like 2 months ago but I've already become a huge fan, especially of all the insight into British topics that usually don't get discussed as much. Keep up the good work!
I don't think people have a problem with Britain's role in the slave trade being discussed. It's the fact some people pretend that the only people who did slavery were the British that I have a problem with. They act like it was unique to us, while entirely ignoring, or simply being ignorant of, slavery literally everywhere else in the world for literally all of time since the invention of agriculture. Viewed in that context, the lengths we went to to abolish slavery is kind of incredible, and I do think we should be proud of it.
You are correct, in all corners of the world The concept of slavery existed in one way or another, as you said it is not exclusively European. All people in all of the continents practiced slavery even the africans enslaved other africans that’s before the scramble for Arica.
As a company that provides services to expats and citizens leaving the west I think a more updated and concise constitution in a single document such as you recommended would help a lot of our British clients feel more at ease about the countries future. Great video we really enjoyed it.
Slave trade was a horror and a stain on the world but it's worth remembering that almost every civilization has had slaves. The British Empire remains the only empire to voluntarily free slaves of its own accord. How many other empires have driven themselves in to a 150 year debt for ethical reasons? I'm not excusing or minimising the evil of it but that's still worth noting
@@Connor-vj7vf hey... denmark do it in 1803 and for everthing being the first state to abolish slavery and is trade...its true..its true i im not saying that denmark do more work to abolish slavery but just arrive first... and also denmark as colonies in africa and in the wes indies and thats territory were slavery was there...
Fantastic video, but looking into the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 it appears that the debt being paid of in 2015 was really a technicality, as opposed to an accurate representation of how large the loan was.
"slavery was never illegal in England" is not entirely true. William I defacto made slavery illegal. He prohibited the sale of slaves from England to overseas, and he emancipated slaves in Wales. Because slavery in that period was generally the purview of conquering foreigners who capture unfortunate locals after the battle and sell them elsewhere, the law covered the primary practice of slave trading, and made it punishable by a fine. The Norman nobility viewed the slave trade as morally abhorrent, and discouraged it and the Church likewise declared slavery morally abhorrent. By the 1120s there were no more slaves in England. The reason the 18th Century slavers could get around the law, was because the law prohibited the sale of slaves _from England to overseas,_ in other words, buying and selling foreigners on foreign land wasn't covered by the ban. They claimed the law only covered British people. They also claimed that bringing a slave to Britain, given that the person was already a slave, wasn't impacted by the law. This was what the court case over Somerset was about: whether or not, (as he was now on English soil and slavery is illegal on English soil), it was legal for Somerset to still be classed as a slave once he landed on English soil and therefore returned. This resulted as you said, in the Empire eventually declaring that any 'English soil' anywhere in the Empire counted as automatic emancipation. Much to the chagrin of the slave plantation owners in the Caribbean. But the reason they couldn't just 'emancipate the slaves' in the plantations was because of an aspect of law that requires that if any law is changed, or any new law is enacted, those who committed the practice before the law was made cannot be held to have done anything illegal, as the law was not on the statute books when they committed the 'offense'. As a result, the slavers who already owned slaves couldn't be held responsible for doing something which was legal back when it happened. So the government decided to buy the slaves to free them instead, to avoid the inevitable legal conflict that would arise from having a law against slavery and yet having entire plantations full of technically-legal slaves throughout the Empire. Fun fact on the Rotten Boroughs. Historians believe that the only reason that England didn't have a revolution at that time was because the political will of the general population was redirected into spiritual fervour by the Methodist Revival. Basically, the people found Jesus and decided that concentrating on the morality of their own lives was more important than changing the politics of the nation by force. However, the Revival had a long-term political influence, as the Methodists decided to raise up reformers to enter parliament and other political offices in order to make change from within the system. It's believed that this drive of religious MPs was the reason why the UK ended up with male universal suffrage when it did.
@@HerewardWake That's a debated point. I actually researched the earliest evidence of race as a social construct in anticipation for a Masters that I was going to be doing in the slave trade (covid and ill health have put it on hold alas). But, I found that it went back far further than the modern narrative believes. Yes, the conventional wisdom was that ideas about race were to legitimize mistreating the slaves, because obviously when you admit somebody is a human being like yourself, you have to consider how much you'd like somebody to do to you what you are doing to them. The easiest way to get around that is dehumanisation, and that's a method that people have used for centuries to excuse their behavior towards their enemies. So the theory is sound to some degree. The conventional narrative says that dehumanisation by race was something Europeans came up with to excuse what they were doing, as it didn't fit in their moral framework. (Europe was mostly slave-free before they engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, because of that moral framework frowning on slavery). The conventional narrative also makes a big thing of the fact that it was believed that the Greco-Roman civilization didn't really have the same idea of race as we do. Instead Romans' attitude to how 'human' you were was down to how culturally like a Roman you were. As a result, anybody could be considered a civilized person, it was just down to education. A wealthy sub-Saharan African Roman citizen was just as valid a person as a wealthy Italian. Or so the idea goes. The way they dehumanised their slaves was to view them as 'barbarians'/savages: people who lacked skills and refinement, and therefore deserving of conquest and enslavement, to civilize them. The problem I found with this view, is that the history of anti-black racism goes back a lot further than this theory proposes. Firstly we find it in the Islamic slave trade (which was in some senses even worse than the trans-Atlantic trade). When the Europeans went to Africa, they encountered the pre-existing slave trade. Greedily they decided to get involved. The Arab traders didn't just teach them how to trade in slaves, they shared with them their attitudes about the African slaves. Most of the racist themes and ideas we find expressed by Europeans in the 19th Century about black people, we find in the Islamic record going back at least to the 8th-9th Century. The idea that black skin was a curse from God so that Arabs would know who was a slave and who was a free man comes directly from the History of the World by Al Tabari. The idea that black people were intrinsically stupid, also appears in numerous early Islamic sources. But the Arabs were not the source of this attitude. They had picked it up from obscure Talmudic Jewish works in Babylon which early Muslims used for supplementary spiritual guidance. Judaism was not responsible for it either. Rather, back when the Talmud was being written in the 200-300 AD era, it seems to have been a pervasive attitude in North Africa, the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire as far east as Iraq today. In fact we see a famous black Christian monk in 200 AD bemoaning his ugliness and his worthlessness at being born black. And claiming that to be black was to be sub-human. So we see that in the mid-Roman period, this idea that black skin made you inferior was already pervasive enough to have found its way into Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources. (Even though this is where we find the examples, they won't have been the only places such views were expressed. Instead, these are the sources most likely to survive, because their religious communities preserved them, where other texts were not prized. Nor would everybody have agreed with them obviously; they are just examples). We do find it in the pagan Roman physician Galen's works, he describes how people with dark skin are naturally cheerful but stupid. But he assigned similar negative traits to every possible human feature you could imagine, from straight nose to squat shoulders, to straight hair, to pink cheeks...etc etc. So quite how and why this one idea clung on when all the other ideas about facial features didn't, I don't know, and I've yet to find a solid reason in the historical record. I may never find one, because the further back in history you go, the fewer texts survive. All I can say for certain, is that the idea that anti-black racism is a recent, European idea, is false, and it seems to have been a pervasive racist stereotype for a very, very long time.
@@HerewardWake It was surprising to me too. As to the reason, it's not an easy thing to establish, because I cannot get inside a person's head now, let alone when they lived 1000-2000 years ago. So we can only guess based on the clues that they left us. But if we don't know the origin of the idea, because it's lost to history, I can at least say that the perpetuation of the anti-black racism seems to have been down to religion. I do not mean that any religion, or group of religious people, had it as a central tenet of their faith that black people were inferior. Nor do I think that the average person who followed any of the religions believed that black people were inferior. Instead what I mean, is that when you make an idea religious, it holds power in a way that other ideas do not. Consider if you are a devout follower of a religion, and you read in the opinions of the religious sages that black people are stupid or inferior, or even cursed by God, what would you do? If you say "I don't agree with that" you are potentially going against your god. Your God may not agree with this idea that black people are inferior, but as an ordinary follower you have limited (or no) way of knowing that. You're not a sage yourself. So you read this sage saying black people are inferior and cursed by God, and suddenly there's a pressure on you to believe it, lest you go against your God. The idea may be completely false but already it's got a hold on you. "Thus sayeth the Lord" is the most potent and dangerous weapon in history. I sometimes feel it has caused more damage and wars than anything else. You tell people "God says so" and any person who believes in the same god is trapped. (side note: I am still researching, so if I focus on Islam for this example, it's just because that's where the majority of my expertise is until I study more.) This seems to have been what happened at least in Islam. Islam believes that the writings of the Jews and Christians are sacred. So early Islamic scholars searched the Jewish and Christian writings for nuggets of wisdom. They searched works that the Jews and Christians themselves wouldn't have seen as sacred, such as the Talmud and the late gnostic writings. But early Islamic scholars assumed these were the sacred works and so took them far more seriously than any Jew or Christian would have. So in the Talmud there is a discussion about the son of Noah, who is called Ham (his name means 'hot' in Hebrew). Ham committed a sin by mocking his father Noah when Noah was naked, (this story is found in the book of Genesis in the Bible). And Noah actually puts a curse on Ham's son, and says that one of Ham's sons will be a slave to his uncles (Ham's brothers), because of the crime Ham committed. In the Talmud (the encyclopaedia of Jewish debates and discussions), several Rabbis make a sort of joke about Ham's cheeks burning "hot as coals" in embarrassment at his crime. Ham = hot. It's just a funny play on words. But here's where the "thus sayeth the Lord" begins to muddy the waters. Later Rabbis in the Talmud seem to have taken this seriously, not understanding perhaps that it was a joke, and instead of seeing red cheeks blushing, they see the word 'coals' and think that means that Noah's curse made Ham's skin black. It's just an obscure debate over an obscure verse, and it's doubtful most Jews even knew the Talmud discussion on this subject even existed. The Talmud is huge, in size it would be like browsing wikipedia. An obscure discussion on a minor wikipedia page wouldn't draw much attention. But the Muslim scholars are reading the Talmud looking for wisdom, and they find this statement about Ham's family being slaves, and Ham's skin being black through a curse, and they assume that means that black people are cursed into being destined to be slaves. Because it's in what they think is sacred writing, they took this statement even more seriously than the confused Jewish rabbis did. This must be from God. So they now feel a pressure to believe it. Add to that some things that Muhammad said: For example he said the devil looked like a black man called Nabtal ibn al-Harith. It seems doubtful he meant the man's physical appearance. The man in question regularly mocked Muhammad and took his sayings back to Muhammad's enemies so that they could laugh at him. So, if you take it figuratively, Muhammad is saying "this double-crossing guy is like the devil" and not "this is what the devil's physical appearance is". But again, like the Rabbis, the further removed you are from the person who originally made the statement, the harder it is to figure out if the comment is in jest, or figurative, and so later on Islamic scholars took Muhammad literally, and assumed he meant the skin color. He also said that anything black was evil, because that was the symbolic color of darkness, and as a result told people they should not wear black clothes, and they should kill black dogs. There's no evidence he extended this to humans, it was essentially an overly simplistic symbolism of light vs darkness, good vs evil, that he spread to cover pigment too. But the danger of making the inference from white=good, black=bad; to white skin=good, black skin=bad is considerable. Some people obviously made that logic leap, whether Muhammad intended them to or not. To the extent that after Muhammad's death, a devout Muslim leader declared that anybody who said Muhammad was not white skinned should be put to death. How could he be dark skinned if dark things like black clothes were evil? Fear and literalism, and religious fervour again making a mess. Shortly after the emergence of Islam there is a very sad quote from an African convert in the Middle East, where he basically bemoans the fact that before Islam Arabs let black men marry their daughters, and now under this new religion they do not. And how he is viewed as a second-class citizen in spite being a Muslim himself. So this idea spread fast. Now, all three religions contain anti-racist statements, about the equality of all humans, and how it's wrong to discriminate. So again, this is not a core belief in any religion. But it was a vein of poison that some people picked up on, and it spread through the culture like a toxin through the body. Sufficient people believed it for racism to spread, and because it had the backing of "thus sayeth the Lord", it was hard to stomp it out, no matter how many egalitarian all-people-are-equal statements any given religious leader promoted. I'm sorry that was such a long read. I don't often get to talk about this research, it's a very delicate topic, and it's not easy to outline it gently. If I use fewer words I fear that I may be misunderstood.
@@HerewardWake Yeah, I find that religion is generally a force for good, in history. Some of our most dominant egalitarian ideas developed out of religions. Anti-slavery and Abolition came from religion as well. But all too frequently people have used religion as a manipulation tool, or simply misunderstood it, and when that happens, it can do considerable damage.
@@HerewardWake there's no question that religions have caused a lot of damage. They are a very easy way to unify people under some kind of tribalistic banner. Humans have an instinct towards tribalism; "us vs them". Religion is an easy go-to for tribalistic tendencies in humans. But there are many others; race and ethnicity, culture, and political ideology being the most obvious. Humans are very good at thinking of "us" as human and "them" as less-human, regardless of what originally unified their group. In any case, I think perhaps you'd find the work of Tom Holland (not the actor, the historian) interesting. He explores the effects of religion on history in his book Dominion. It's really an eye-opening book.
To add, there was the Chartist Movement that began circa 1836 , who wanted 6 Points - A vote for every man over the age of 21 - Secret Ballots - Non Land Owning males could vote - Payment for MP's - Ridings have equal sizes - Regular Elections .
Thank you for clarrifying slavery wasn't ILLEGAL either. I've heard so many people claim that Slavery was not a thing in England itself - the evidence clearly says otherwise - thousands of slaves lived in English cities throughout the centuries. I've heard so many right-wing nationalists (inlcuding Sargon of Akkad) outright claim it was never permitted in Britain - which it wasn't, yet it's not that simple and to claim it was is to overlook boat-loads of evidence. People missunderstand common law precedence as some form of civil-law, wholly powerful law. The main argument i've heard from these people is "Slavery was illegal because kidnapping was, and this is kidnapping, even if slavery wasn't specifically outlawed" - such a stupid ignorant take...
The whole "kidnapping was illegal" things is so stupid when most slaves were purchased from slavers in Africa. I read a French document where they justified slavery because they assumed that all slaves were prisoners of war and therefore they were doing them a favour by letting them live in slavery rather than die in battle. In reality the demand for slaves drove slave raids but nobody wanted to admit that/didn't actually know how it worked.
Middle ages: drama spiraling into weird laws that oftentimes broke more then fixed Industrial revolution: can I be somebody? Pre-Cold War: didn't watch yet
Um, the African slave trade was abolished, partly driven by anti-American sentiment following American independence, but the Africans on the sugar plantations were simply replaced by Indians. They weren't "traded", as they were moved within the empire, and the legal status of a slave being owned was gotten around by having those Indians sign "contracts" (which they could not read) giving up their rights to become "indentured" workers. The trafficking of Indians from India, across the Pacific, dispersing them to places like South Africa, Fiji, continued until a moratorium on the trafficking was put into effect in 1913.
7:05 I agree with that statement right there cuz the back of the matter is that Britain didn't have slavery we would have never had slavery over here in the United States of America because the concept of slavery was carried over from British common law concerning slavery as a matter of fact the very first sleep in the United States their employer took them to court and sued them and at the time the United States was a British colony and up underneath British law for anybody points this out it is a contradictory in American history in one that should have never existed in the first place
@7:37 what the HELL is this creature in the lower left corner? a british bigfoot? and being british, is civilised and just chills out there with the locals, inhaling fire or whatever the hell it's doing here...
Evidence please. You say parliament took out a loan in 1833 to buy every slave in the Empire and that this loan was repaid in 2015. May I ask for the source of this info. Thanks
Yes, we were using slaves for 200 years, but so were many others, including Africans. The difference is, we put a stop to the bloody nasty business and made sure everyone else did too.
Saying the debt was so large the government didn’t stop paying it off till 2015 is very misleading. More accurately the government continued to honour the coupon it owed on gilts with non-expiring annuities or perpetuities, known as consols. These gilts would have been traded on the second hand market over the years becoming unrelated to the initial recipients or 1833 act.
03:09 the omission of 'thank God' was probably unneeded and it's absence misses out a lot of the subtext as to the motivations and views of the documents themselves
where is part 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Earl Grey is someone I consider to be an absolute mad lad.
He assisted in abolishing slavery twice (Foreign secretary in 1807 and PM in 1833), as well as starting the process for a fair and balanced government.
As well as the fact that he solved all his problems by threatening to leave. Eventually fully quitting when problems with Ireland occurred, as they do.
I'd also like to say he had 16 legitimate children, and spent equal time in government and with family.
@@Renaissance_Kamikaze That would be his father, also known as Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey.
He's most known as 'No Flint Grey' during the American Revolutionary War, where during an infiltration of a fort, he told his soldiers to not use the flint in their muskets and instead their bayonets, reducing the noise and light by the muskets. In the end he claimed the fort.
He also became tea
Good guy, awful tea.
@@loading9110 what makes you say that
Hooray for Earl grey
You gotta love the "show something for a few frames then undo it because there actually isn't any" move, gets me everytime
The women voters bar had me in tears😂
Excellent video! I’ve been waiting for this one 🙂🙂👍🏼👍🏼
oh god it's the crossover of the century
Same, looking forward to your next radiohead reference
Brit: Tune in next month for part 3!
Me: Bu... but, but it's the first of November?
ahhhhhhhhhh... time to wait
Who would've guessed that actual research and script writing takes time?
@@tiagoprado7001at least quality of video would surely skyrocket
a little bit more waiting
Just to clarify, the English slaveship “Zong”was originaly a Dutch slaveship called “Zorg” which does translate to ‘care’ in dutch, but also to ‘burden’ and/or ‘worry’ depending on it’s use. “Zong” in dutch is the past tense op the english “Singing”, “Sang” Not that this detail is of any importance to the story.
was going to comment this but ah well
I didn't know Dutch was actually a fantasy language.
Neat, until you said Dutch it sounded like a villain from a sci-fi universe, but I now immediately see the relationship to German "Sorgen", which has the same meanings.
@@seneca983 Tolkein created the dutch language
@@ekszentrik also sorrow in english has the same root and a somewhat similar meaning. also zong would be sang in english and german
I don't understand how these haven't gone viral yet. Such an interesting topic that we don't really get educated on in the UK, at least at my school.
I didn't learn about any of this until I did my law degree, not even in A-level law was this ever mentioned.
this series is criminally underrated but ive been waiting for this one a lot
Sounds as if these Tories were surley put out of power in the coming years and fell into obscurity with the feudal lords losing power. Anything else would be crazy.
shame they are still in power today lol
You do realise it’s the Tories who abolished slavery right?
@@martychisnall That is a really reductive and uninformed take.
@@martychisnall Abolished by 2nd Earl Grey, a Whig not a Tory.
@@martychisnall they didn't. It literally says it in the video
As a Canadian who is a nerd over our constitution, this is a very fun series to watch, since our constitution uses a lot of the same documents / Constitutional Conventions but also added some federalist twists. Thank you for putting this together!
Superb work my friend. The graphics are great, whole work is very concise and cogent and to the point
Just watched all your video in a day
And I love your way of narrative.
Just continue to makes such interesting and awesome video
Great stuff Mr. Monkey! Really looking forward to part III of this two part series.
I've only discovered your channel like 2 months ago but I've already become a huge fan, especially of all the insight into British topics that usually don't get discussed as much. Keep up the good work!
YES!!! Been looking forwards to this one!
Same
I don't think people have a problem with Britain's role in the slave trade being discussed. It's the fact some people pretend that the only people who did slavery were the British that I have a problem with. They act like it was unique to us, while entirely ignoring, or simply being ignorant of, slavery literally everywhere else in the world for literally all of time since the invention of agriculture. Viewed in that context, the lengths we went to to abolish slavery is kind of incredible, and I do think we should be proud of it.
You are correct, in all corners of the world
The concept of slavery existed in one way or another, as you said it is not exclusively European.
All people in all of the continents practiced slavery even the africans enslaved other africans that’s before the scramble for Arica.
As a company that provides services to expats and citizens leaving the west I think a more updated and concise constitution in a single document such as you recommended would help a lot of our British clients feel more at ease about the countries future. Great video we really enjoyed it.
Slave trade was a horror and a stain on the world but it's worth remembering that almost every civilization has had slaves.
The British Empire remains the only empire to voluntarily free slaves of its own accord. How many other empires have driven themselves in to a 150 year debt for ethical reasons?
I'm not excusing or minimising the evil of it but that's still worth noting
denmark do it before 1807 so....
@@davidelabarile1634 Fair enough, I take your point. Still, it was more intrinsic to the economy of the British Empire than to the Danes
@@Connor-vj7vf hey...
denmark do it in 1803 and for everthing being the first state to abolish slavery and is trade...its true..its true i im not saying that denmark do more work to abolish slavery but just arrive first...
and also denmark as colonies in africa and in the wes indies and thats territory were slavery was there...
I have a cold and have been binge watching your channel, super entertaining stuff my guy!
3:08 you ommitted "thank God!"
Fantastic video, but looking into the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 it appears that the debt being paid of in 2015 was really a technicality, as opposed to an accurate representation of how large the loan was.
"slavery was never illegal in England" is not entirely true. William I defacto made slavery illegal. He prohibited the sale of slaves from England to overseas, and he emancipated slaves in Wales. Because slavery in that period was generally the purview of conquering foreigners who capture unfortunate locals after the battle and sell them elsewhere, the law covered the primary practice of slave trading, and made it punishable by a fine. The Norman nobility viewed the slave trade as morally abhorrent, and discouraged it and the Church likewise declared slavery morally abhorrent. By the 1120s there were no more slaves in England.
The reason the 18th Century slavers could get around the law, was because the law prohibited the sale of slaves _from England to overseas,_ in other words, buying and selling foreigners on foreign land wasn't covered by the ban. They claimed the law only covered British people. They also claimed that bringing a slave to Britain, given that the person was already a slave, wasn't impacted by the law. This was what the court case over Somerset was about: whether or not, (as he was now on English soil and slavery is illegal on English soil), it was legal for Somerset to still be classed as a slave once he landed on English soil and therefore returned. This resulted as you said, in the Empire eventually declaring that any 'English soil' anywhere in the Empire counted as automatic emancipation. Much to the chagrin of the slave plantation owners in the Caribbean.
But the reason they couldn't just 'emancipate the slaves' in the plantations was because of an aspect of law that requires that if any law is changed, or any new law is enacted, those who committed the practice before the law was made cannot be held to have done anything illegal, as the law was not on the statute books when they committed the 'offense'. As a result, the slavers who already owned slaves couldn't be held responsible for doing something which was legal back when it happened. So the government decided to buy the slaves to free them instead, to avoid the inevitable legal conflict that would arise from having a law against slavery and yet having entire plantations full of technically-legal slaves throughout the Empire.
Fun fact on the Rotten Boroughs. Historians believe that the only reason that England didn't have a revolution at that time was because the political will of the general population was redirected into spiritual fervour by the Methodist Revival. Basically, the people found Jesus and decided that concentrating on the morality of their own lives was more important than changing the politics of the nation by force. However, the Revival had a long-term political influence, as the Methodists decided to raise up reformers to enter parliament and other political offices in order to make change from within the system. It's believed that this drive of religious MPs was the reason why the UK ended up with male universal suffrage when it did.
@@HerewardWake That's a debated point. I actually researched the earliest evidence of race as a social construct in anticipation for a Masters that I was going to be doing in the slave trade (covid and ill health have put it on hold alas). But, I found that it went back far further than the modern narrative believes. Yes, the conventional wisdom was that ideas about race were to legitimize mistreating the slaves, because obviously when you admit somebody is a human being like yourself, you have to consider how much you'd like somebody to do to you what you are doing to them. The easiest way to get around that is dehumanisation, and that's a method that people have used for centuries to excuse their behavior towards their enemies. So the theory is sound to some degree.
The conventional narrative says that dehumanisation by race was something Europeans came up with to excuse what they were doing, as it didn't fit in their moral framework. (Europe was mostly slave-free before they engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, because of that moral framework frowning on slavery). The conventional narrative also makes a big thing of the fact that it was believed that the Greco-Roman civilization didn't really have the same idea of race as we do. Instead Romans' attitude to how 'human' you were was down to how culturally like a Roman you were. As a result, anybody could be considered a civilized person, it was just down to education. A wealthy sub-Saharan African Roman citizen was just as valid a person as a wealthy Italian. Or so the idea goes. The way they dehumanised their slaves was to view them as 'barbarians'/savages: people who lacked skills and refinement, and therefore deserving of conquest and enslavement, to civilize them.
The problem I found with this view, is that the history of anti-black racism goes back a lot further than this theory proposes. Firstly we find it in the Islamic slave trade (which was in some senses even worse than the trans-Atlantic trade). When the Europeans went to Africa, they encountered the pre-existing slave trade. Greedily they decided to get involved. The Arab traders didn't just teach them how to trade in slaves, they shared with them their attitudes about the African slaves. Most of the racist themes and ideas we find expressed by Europeans in the 19th Century about black people, we find in the Islamic record going back at least to the 8th-9th Century. The idea that black skin was a curse from God so that Arabs would know who was a slave and who was a free man comes directly from the History of the World by Al Tabari. The idea that black people were intrinsically stupid, also appears in numerous early Islamic sources.
But the Arabs were not the source of this attitude. They had picked it up from obscure Talmudic Jewish works in Babylon which early Muslims used for supplementary spiritual guidance. Judaism was not responsible for it either. Rather, back when the Talmud was being written in the 200-300 AD era, it seems to have been a pervasive attitude in North Africa, the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire as far east as Iraq today. In fact we see a famous black Christian monk in 200 AD bemoaning his ugliness and his worthlessness at being born black. And claiming that to be black was to be sub-human.
So we see that in the mid-Roman period, this idea that black skin made you inferior was already pervasive enough to have found its way into Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources. (Even though this is where we find the examples, they won't have been the only places such views were expressed. Instead, these are the sources most likely to survive, because their religious communities preserved them, where other texts were not prized. Nor would everybody have agreed with them obviously; they are just examples). We do find it in the pagan Roman physician Galen's works, he describes how people with dark skin are naturally cheerful but stupid. But he assigned similar negative traits to every possible human feature you could imagine, from straight nose to squat shoulders, to straight hair, to pink cheeks...etc etc. So quite how and why this one idea clung on when all the other ideas about facial features didn't, I don't know, and I've yet to find a solid reason in the historical record. I may never find one, because the further back in history you go, the fewer texts survive. All I can say for certain, is that the idea that anti-black racism is a recent, European idea, is false, and it seems to have been a pervasive racist stereotype for a very, very long time.
@@HerewardWake It was surprising to me too. As to the reason, it's not an easy thing to establish, because I cannot get inside a person's head now, let alone when they lived 1000-2000 years ago. So we can only guess based on the clues that they left us. But if we don't know the origin of the idea, because it's lost to history, I can at least say that the perpetuation of the anti-black racism seems to have been down to religion. I do not mean that any religion, or group of religious people, had it as a central tenet of their faith that black people were inferior. Nor do I think that the average person who followed any of the religions believed that black people were inferior. Instead what I mean, is that when you make an idea religious, it holds power in a way that other ideas do not.
Consider if you are a devout follower of a religion, and you read in the opinions of the religious sages that black people are stupid or inferior, or even cursed by God, what would you do? If you say "I don't agree with that" you are potentially going against your god. Your God may not agree with this idea that black people are inferior, but as an ordinary follower you have limited (or no) way of knowing that. You're not a sage yourself. So you read this sage saying black people are inferior and cursed by God, and suddenly there's a pressure on you to believe it, lest you go against your God. The idea may be completely false but already it's got a hold on you. "Thus sayeth the Lord" is the most potent and dangerous weapon in history. I sometimes feel it has caused more damage and wars than anything else. You tell people "God says so" and any person who believes in the same god is trapped.
(side note: I am still researching, so if I focus on Islam for this example, it's just because that's where the majority of my expertise is until I study more.)
This seems to have been what happened at least in Islam. Islam believes that the writings of the Jews and Christians are sacred. So early Islamic scholars searched the Jewish and Christian writings for nuggets of wisdom. They searched works that the Jews and Christians themselves wouldn't have seen as sacred, such as the Talmud and the late gnostic writings. But early Islamic scholars assumed these were the sacred works and so took them far more seriously than any Jew or Christian would have.
So in the Talmud there is a discussion about the son of Noah, who is called Ham (his name means 'hot' in Hebrew). Ham committed a sin by mocking his father Noah when Noah was naked, (this story is found in the book of Genesis in the Bible). And Noah actually puts a curse on Ham's son, and says that one of Ham's sons will be a slave to his uncles (Ham's brothers), because of the crime Ham committed. In the Talmud (the encyclopaedia of Jewish debates and discussions), several Rabbis make a sort of joke about Ham's cheeks burning "hot as coals" in embarrassment at his crime. Ham = hot. It's just a funny play on words.
But here's where the "thus sayeth the Lord" begins to muddy the waters. Later Rabbis in the Talmud seem to have taken this seriously, not understanding perhaps that it was a joke, and instead of seeing red cheeks blushing, they see the word 'coals' and think that means that Noah's curse made Ham's skin black. It's just an obscure debate over an obscure verse, and it's doubtful most Jews even knew the Talmud discussion on this subject even existed. The Talmud is huge, in size it would be like browsing wikipedia. An obscure discussion on a minor wikipedia page wouldn't draw much attention.
But the Muslim scholars are reading the Talmud looking for wisdom, and they find this statement about Ham's family being slaves, and Ham's skin being black through a curse, and they assume that means that black people are cursed into being destined to be slaves. Because it's in what they think is sacred writing, they took this statement even more seriously than the confused Jewish rabbis did. This must be from God. So they now feel a pressure to believe it.
Add to that some things that Muhammad said: For example he said the devil looked like a black man called Nabtal ibn al-Harith. It seems doubtful he meant the man's physical appearance. The man in question regularly mocked Muhammad and took his sayings back to Muhammad's enemies so that they could laugh at him. So, if you take it figuratively, Muhammad is saying "this double-crossing guy is like the devil" and not "this is what the devil's physical appearance is". But again, like the Rabbis, the further removed you are from the person who originally made the statement, the harder it is to figure out if the comment is in jest, or figurative, and so later on Islamic scholars took Muhammad literally, and assumed he meant the skin color.
He also said that anything black was evil, because that was the symbolic color of darkness, and as a result told people they should not wear black clothes, and they should kill black dogs. There's no evidence he extended this to humans, it was essentially an overly simplistic symbolism of light vs darkness, good vs evil, that he spread to cover pigment too. But the danger of making the inference from white=good, black=bad; to white skin=good, black skin=bad is considerable. Some people obviously made that logic leap, whether Muhammad intended them to or not. To the extent that after Muhammad's death, a devout Muslim leader declared that anybody who said Muhammad was not white skinned should be put to death. How could he be dark skinned if dark things like black clothes were evil? Fear and literalism, and religious fervour again making a mess.
Shortly after the emergence of Islam there is a very sad quote from an African convert in the Middle East, where he basically bemoans the fact that before Islam Arabs let black men marry their daughters, and now under this new religion they do not. And how he is viewed as a second-class citizen in spite being a Muslim himself. So this idea spread fast.
Now, all three religions contain anti-racist statements, about the equality of all humans, and how it's wrong to discriminate. So again, this is not a core belief in any religion. But it was a vein of poison that some people picked up on, and it spread through the culture like a toxin through the body. Sufficient people believed it for racism to spread, and because it had the backing of "thus sayeth the Lord", it was hard to stomp it out, no matter how many egalitarian all-people-are-equal statements any given religious leader promoted.
I'm sorry that was such a long read. I don't often get to talk about this research, it's a very delicate topic, and it's not easy to outline it gently. If I use fewer words I fear that I may be misunderstood.
@@HerewardWake Yeah, I find that religion is generally a force for good, in history. Some of our most dominant egalitarian ideas developed out of religions. Anti-slavery and Abolition came from religion as well. But all too frequently people have used religion as a manipulation tool, or simply misunderstood it, and when that happens, it can do considerable damage.
@@HerewardWake there's no question that religions have caused a lot of damage. They are a very easy way to unify people under some kind of tribalistic banner. Humans have an instinct towards tribalism; "us vs them". Religion is an easy go-to for tribalistic tendencies in humans. But there are many others; race and ethnicity, culture, and political ideology being the most obvious. Humans are very good at thinking of "us" as human and "them" as less-human, regardless of what originally unified their group. In any case, I think perhaps you'd find the work of Tom Holland (not the actor, the historian) interesting. He explores the effects of religion on history in his book Dominion. It's really an eye-opening book.
11:38 Ah, yes, nothing better than the soundtrack of a British gentleman saving Britain from destruction in a footage of Britain being destroyed.
Been so looking forward to this video
Glad to see the tories haven't changed at all.
The Return Of The King
He's been gone for 2 weeks
As someone from the UK these videos have been great!
thanks it is always interesting to learn about other constitution and laws etc
Great video again, looking forward to part 3!!
I cannot express how fascinating this is
Thank you for this video! As a Northumbrian it makes me happy to see Earl Grey gain recognition.
To add, there was the Chartist Movement that began circa 1836 , who wanted 6 Points
- A vote for every man over the age of 21
- Secret Ballots
- Non Land Owning males could vote
- Payment for MP's
- Ridings have equal sizes
- Regular Elections
.
Part III when?
finally, what I'm waiting for
Still waiting on part 3
I can’t believe I’ve watched every single one of your videos.
Actually 10x better than my constitutional law module at uni
where is part 3?
It's fundamental to learn about the constitution of UK as it has shaped the modern philosophy of politics and learn from their mistakes as well.
It's been a month BRITTY.
Love your videos! Very informative and entertaining! 😃😃😃
It's either 'a lot fairer' or 'a lot more fair'. It it's 'a lot more fairer'.. (Double superlative).
Literally squealed at Bob Hale
Still happy that I found you in my recommends
Best history class I never had
Thank you for clarrifying slavery wasn't ILLEGAL either. I've heard so many people claim that Slavery was not a thing in England itself - the evidence clearly says otherwise - thousands of slaves lived in English cities throughout the centuries. I've heard so many right-wing nationalists (inlcuding Sargon of Akkad) outright claim it was never permitted in Britain - which it wasn't, yet it's not that simple and to claim it was is to overlook boat-loads of evidence. People missunderstand common law precedence as some form of civil-law, wholly powerful law.
The main argument i've heard from these people is "Slavery was illegal because kidnapping was, and this is kidnapping, even if slavery wasn't specifically outlawed" - such a stupid ignorant take...
The whole "kidnapping was illegal" things is so stupid when most slaves were purchased from slavers in Africa. I read a French document where they justified slavery because they assumed that all slaves were prisoners of war and therefore they were doing them a favour by letting them live in slavery rather than die in battle. In reality the demand for slaves drove slave raids but nobody wanted to admit that/didn't actually know how it worked.
Famously the coal miners and salt workers of Scotland. Native Scots born to slavery. vagrants could also be forced into slavery.
I mean arguably this ruling says that it always was illegal just not properly challenged until that point.
Trafficking and slavery still goes on today. Just because something happened doesn’t mean it was ever legal.
I really love your videos. Keep it up.
Im following this series with great interest
babe wake up new britmonkey vid just dropped
yay part 2
Middle ages: drama spiraling into weird laws that oftentimes broke more then fixed
Industrial revolution: can I be somebody?
Pre-Cold War: didn't watch yet
Ahh, just finished all your videos mate, keep up the good work!
Yay new video from britmonkey!l
Liking and commenting just to foment the algorithm, go, spread this video to the masses!
I hear SimAnt music at 5:00. I haven't heard that song in decades.
Um, the African slave trade was abolished, partly driven by anti-American sentiment following American independence, but the Africans on the sugar plantations were simply replaced by Indians. They weren't "traded", as they were moved within the empire, and the legal status of a slave being owned was gotten around by having those Indians sign "contracts" (which they could not read) giving up their rights to become "indentured" workers. The trafficking of Indians from India, across the Pacific, dispersing them to places like South Africa, Fiji, continued until a moratorium on the trafficking was put into effect in 1913.
Absolutely brilliant thanks!!
i just love the fact that uk got rid of slavery and listened to people as a matter of morals
ayyyy Professor Layton music
Love these keep making them
The British constitution:
The end.
7:05 I agree with that statement right there cuz the back of the matter is that Britain didn't have slavery we would have never had slavery over here in the United States of America because the concept of slavery was carried over from British common law concerning slavery as a matter of fact the very first sleep in the United States their employer took them to court and sued them and at the time the United States was a British colony and up underneath British law for anybody points this out it is a contradictory in American history in one that should have never existed in the first place
@7:37 what the HELL is this creature in the lower left corner? a british bigfoot? and being british, is civilised and just chills out there with the locals, inhaling fire or whatever the hell it's doing here...
also, appears to be a witch on the sign above all these people... there's a LOT to unpack in this picture...
This need a part III
live, laugh, bob hale
13:35 I will always recognise the Robin Hood the Legend of Sherwood soundtrack : )
Britain in the 1830s: Man buying all the slaves to free them was pretty hard
US in the 1860s:
Been waiting for this
Evidence please. You say parliament took out a loan in 1833 to buy every slave in the Empire and that this loan was repaid in 2015. May I ask for the source of this info. Thanks
I like this video, thank you. It is more interesting that I have thought It'd be
HELL YEEEEAH _𝐁𝐫𝐮𝐡'𝐯𝐞𝐡._ ☕🇬🇧
that's kind of insane how they paid for everyones release
but diverted a part of their navy to stopping it
couldn't even bring yourself to say Thank God lol XD
Are you thinking of making a video on when a british hawker hunter fired a missile and it turned around and tried to kill the plane it was fired from?
Yes, we were using slaves for 200 years, but so were many others, including Africans. The difference is, we put a stop to the bloody nasty business and made sure everyone else did too.
It’s for this reason I am prepared for our generation to be looked on similarly for owning toasters and appliances when androids get their rights.
No you didnt, clearly you didnt stop the americans doing it
still on the wait for the third part
will it come out one day or not ?
I didn't realize "the Whigs" were their own political group.
oh yeah front row seats
Great vid, keep this up!
What editing software is that at 0:28? Anyway, good video 👍
Adobe Premier
the reason why we all speak english now 😂😂
next month i cry
God damn... The got me too... I'm totally in a country that has almost nothing to do with England and I still speak English... Those sneaky British...
This was wonderful
Saying the debt was so large the government didn’t stop paying it off till 2015 is very misleading. More accurately the government continued to honour the coupon it owed on gilts with non-expiring annuities or perpetuities, known as consols. These gilts would have been traded on the second hand market over the years becoming unrelated to the initial recipients or 1833 act.
being early:😃
but having not watched the first part:😭
This is very interesting!
2:03 that is because Somerset wasn't treated like a human being. He was rather treated like an animal, or an object.
03:09 the omission of 'thank God' was probably unneeded and it's absence misses out a lot of the subtext as to the motivations and views of the documents themselves
where is part 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Omg it's finally here!!!
Whoooohoooo! Part twooooo!
Great video, but you REALLY need a more exciting thumbnail for these ones!
100%
Is that seriously how part of the monetization-system works?
May i know where the first 5 seconds of this video originated from?
tory is still a curse on this union of kingdoms and their peoples. We must rid ourselves of it.
Great video 👍
Happy 100k subscribers
Dang it you beat me too it >:D
We NEED proportional representation.. First Past The Post is not fit for purpose.
Your a great Historian!
Screaming cargo
Yes...