I know. I had a girlfriend whose mother was a Nazi. It costs money to replace them and after a famine the price of slaves would rise. A fifty quid note in the hand of the first black bloke you encounter. There is plenty of slavery about we just do not call it that. Shouldnt matter whether some long-dead relative fought long ago for or against (not at all to disparage your ancestors GC, who all sound very sound) in terms of whether somethings your fault. What has he got to say about that? Which of those societies does Olusogas ancestry come from? And they will go looking for parts of the past that aren't on the curriculum, and they evidently do. Intellectually more convincing anyway for practical and political purposes, demolishing a straw-man often makes a better video or audio clip while simultaneously making your opponents position sound stupid. They arent going to concede anything. If Olusoga is looking for apologies or compensation for slavery, I am quite prepared to meet him, accept his apology, togehr with cash, cheque or even a postal order. The Russians do not have these problems because they are not ashamed. How does importing new labour from West Africa solve the food shortage in the West Indies? If one disproves his assertions would slavery then be okay? By a Senegalese author: The veiled genocide = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxc5ENT8ajg, MyBurningEars August 30, 2020 at 11:52 am Slavery within West African societies being different again I dont think the places with very high rates of local slavery were anything like the sugar plantations. "They do not want British history to be a catalogue of heroes and victories and glorious chapters," he says. His exposure to Nigerian culture seems quite limited. I could just as well feel something else entirely, and Im sceptical of all approaches to impose a supposedly universal, timeless or even just coherent, thats a challenge in itself ethical system. But Ill tell you what, slavery and human sacrifice, still awful. One sporting event that has captured your imagination I was fortunate enough to get tickets to see some of the basketball at the London 2012 Olympics, so my brother and I went to watch the GB vs. Spain game. West Indians fought with the Allies more than a hundred were decorated. Its extraordinary success rested upon the foundation of sympathy laid down during the previous 70 years of abolitionist activity in Britain. Prof Olusoga says statues, such as those of slave traders . Would the good professor really be so different if genealogical records could prove he had African ancestors who owned African slaves? I think a case could be made. He previously worked at JP Morgan for 18 years in a number of senior roles and was . Slavery didnt last much longer for various reasons, fizzled out in a century or so, but we have the records to show it was still part of the system after twenty years of Norman rule: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm. Watching @worstall execute @richardjmurphy is like watching a very, very clever cat slowly killing at ataxic mouse. Separated from home and family and landed in the West Indies (countless numbers dying of suffocation during the journey, given that the people traffickers were packing the holds to maximise profits), the Africans had no recourse to the law, much less the conscience of their captors. Dr Peter Olusoga is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. But Muslims were enslaving white Europeans into Africa long before the Atlantic route, usually castrating the males. The government has said the "flexibility within the history curriculum means that there is the opportunity for teachers to teach about BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) history across a spectrum of themes and eras" so it did "not believe it was necessary to change the curriculum". When the American Civil War interrupted the supply of cotton, hundreds of thousands of British workers were made destitute, dependent on soup kitchens, and the British economy was dealt a thunderous blow, all because an ocean away the forced labour of four million enslaved black Americans had been disrupted. Then a young teenager, he was driven out of his council home, together with his grandmother, mother, two sisters and younger brother, by a sustained campaign of nightly stoning of their windows. Reasonable estimates have some 50% of the inhabitants of the Sokoto Caliphate as late as the late 19th cent being slaves. They have a game plan & youre falling for it. The reason why Equiano is not a national name is because slavery is not a part of the history that we teach when it should be because I don't think you can understand the 18th century in particular but also the 19th century without reference to slavery.". In that moment, his interest in history overlapped. Less flippantly, Western countries are not of one mind when it comes to the age of consent sex with a 14 year-old is legal in some countries, criminal in others (yes yes, paedophilia versus ephebophilia etc, you got me).. Would, say, Huguenot-descended South Africans suing France over the 1572 St. Bartholomews Day massacre, or Cornish people suing HMG for the suppression of the 1497 Rebellion, deserve compensation? "I don't know why this generation has a different relationship with the past, goes to the past, expecting and looking for different things to earlier generations, but that's really is my observation about them," he says adding the internet has played a huge part. Nineteen eighty-four affected him in another way: the publication of Peter Fryers groundbreaking Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain introduced him to the scholarship needed to understand his position in Britain. Mans a loon. Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates. So how much have considered paedophilia? True that unlike certain other examples of slavery, you werent likely to be killed as part of a religious sacrifice or as part of your owners funeral. many African tribes kept slaves. That hes able to write this article is because hes living in what is, by historical standards, a remarkably tolerant society. Would probably have taken your suggestion as a challenge. Country Star Kacey Musgraves: Voting for Trump Is an Act of Violence. What do you think their stongest argument is? This seems rather unlikely. Hes insisting that a household headed by a 21 year old black should have the average wealth of all white households. By this logic, we ought to sue the African American community. A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown. A covering letter would be a courtesy but probably not a necessity. Pope Nicholas V gave his blessing, so long as the Vatican benefited. 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. This ignorant fellow should study historical facts, rather than believing and repeating lies and half-truths. Prof Olusoga, the presenter of the A House Through Time TV series, calls it an act of "historical salvage" to bring to the fore the black British figures who had been "lost in the archives, completely forgotten". Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. He seems to be an interesting social historian and his TV series on the occupants of a single house over the centuries is very good, although I suspect a lot of the research is done by others, I look forward to an even handed expose of the entire slave trade from birth to capture, imprisonment, sale, transportation, arrival, sale, treatment and life while enslaved as well as the UKs role in stopping it, But it wont be on the BBC, and he wont be writing it I fear, @smfs Forbes magazine's extraordinarily arrogant contributor Tim Worstall Jeremy Corbyn. Theres a flaw in arguments of the form frankly you should be glad I murdered your sister, since had I not done so, its quite possible though we cannot be sure that someone else would have tortured her then murdered her, which is even worse, so whos the real criminal? Which is that I still murdered your sister. Its very noticable how nobodys mentioning that the Spanish Empire were doing this for several centuries before the British got involved. He adds: "The reason Equiano's story, Equiano's voice, is not as well known as it should be, is because we have a long habit in this country of not wanting to talk about slavery. I havent said anything about my personal sense of guilt or responsibility. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. "The way history is viewed is changing. That is a strawman argument at its best. The UK, Norway, Benelux, Spain, Malta and Switzerland are, I believe, the only western European countries to set it at 16. If someone from Portugal or France wants to explain why their country has done a better job of getting the balance right, Im open to hearing it. That star stuff wont last. 5 quotes from David Olusoga: 'On a peninsula protruding into one of the great highways of the Atlantic slave trade, a few hundred refugees from British slavery in North America were attempting to recreate the social structures of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages.', 'Time and again events and phenomena that we think we know and understand contain within them lost or camouflaged connections to . They also ran a slave trade to the Ottoman empire and white slavery in the north without any help from Europeans. Just means they werent alone in being in the wrong. That someone did something 200 years ago means double ought nothing.. In the system that made Sloane wealthy, black women sought out herbs, plant species that he carefully identified and categorised, and used them to induce abortions, determined as many were not to bring into the world children who would be born items of property and destined to live short, brutalised lives. Thy did not try to grow or raise the next generation. And the fact youre moved to tears by discovering for the first time a great-great-great-grandmother of yours was a prostitute single-mum with seven kids or a great-x5-uncle you had never heard of was imprisoned for murder, well, your utter lack of knowledge simply reveals how little youve been influenced by them, so youre hardly discovering a new facet of yourself at all. Wider imperialism reparations that include South Asia, China for the Opium Wars and so on, surely even more prohibitively costly, regardless of how effective the education system gets at making young Brits feel a vague sense of guilt about it all. Then the second. "I have," he admits, "a habit of . A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history - sent every Wednesday. at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too.. One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. It can be withdrawn. BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3, The Meaning of Zong, Spacious open-plan family home in Muswell Hill, Five Cineworlds across south London still at risk of permanent closure, Residents who have 'suffered for years' to be asked if they want blocks knocked down, Dazzling Thamesmead light festival returns with performances, films and flash mob, Charlton murderer claims prison guards broke his arm and sues for 20k, Children and young people with eating disorders face treatment postcode lottery, Angry protests erupt over Greek rail disaster, How fake copyright complaints are muzzling journalists, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. In America few were castrated, which is why there are now >40 million descendants there. In the case of slavery the answer is clear. No? Shipwrecked off the coast of Africa, he, and other survivors, were taken by an African tribe as captives. I hadnt gotten far when she stopped me cold, pointing out that her best friend, a 15 year old girl knitting beside a window in her house, was machine gunned by an American P-51 pilot. They included Josiah Wedgwood (the pottery entrepreneur), Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. Deliberately shipping that many people that far in order to participate in a newly-created society whose economic system was designed, pretty much from the ground up, around slave labour? This history of the black presence in . In dealing with the black contribution to the First World War, for example, he cites popular gratitude and admiration for black Britons among them Walter Tull, who fought on the Western Front. Nevertheless, we live in a society that generally regards slavery as an absolute and eternal wrong, and a grave one at that, yet which has historically (at least certain people and places, and including the state itself) benefited from imposing slavery on others.. Young people - such as Lavinya Stennett who founded the Black Curriculum campaign group - have been calling for change. His exposure to Nigerian culture seems quite limited. I imagine few do. "We are on a journey in this country and other countries are on similar journeys to try and reconnect to parts of our history that had traditionally been edited out," adds Prof Olusoga. People seem pretty much agreed on what is right and what is wrong. It was the first of the slave narratives that I'd ever read and I found it astonishing.". And so, equipped with the fruits of Islamic learning (new navigational instruments, books on astronomy and trigonometry), European explorers set sail for Africa to relieve the natives of their gold. at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too. (As the first person to mention the Sokoto Caliphate ahh, forget it.). The Celtic version of slavery (which ran to quite a different model) was still going on in the places the Romans didnt reach. When I met her, ~1995, I started asking her questions about the war, as I thought she was a fabulous resource of information. As would Beyonce. Good point, I wonder how he squares the obviously comfortable living he has writing, opining and broadcasting about slavery with his principles. It began to alter (slightly) the history curriculum at university level: the first undergraduate one-year course on black British history and culture was taught at the University of Warwick in 1984. As the late 19th cent being slaves people seem pretty much agreed on what,... ), Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson for 18 years in a number of senior roles and was its noticable. Voting for Trump is an Act of Violence fit together the pieces of the past that are n't on curriculum... 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