Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

For discussions on politics and current events.
Lord Jim
Senior Member
Posts: 7314
Joined: 10 Dec 2015, 02:15
United Kingdom

Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Lord Jim »

In recent years it has become fashionable to see the British Empire as some authoritarian tyrannical institution that destroyed cultures and dragged these people into hellish lives of slavery in order to fund said Empire. Now I believe slavery was or in some case still is an abhorrent practice and should be stamped out wherever it is found, but the way the British are portrayed today is a very one sided and biased view in my opinion. The same can be said about how the trade was conducted and over what time frame. One of the key issues is that Africans sold African slaves to each other, the Arabs and eventually European countries. Rarely did Europeans mount slave "Hunting" expeditions as is sometimes portrayed in books and film. But the biggest issue I have is that the fact that it was Britain that actually forced an ending of the International slave trade at great cost to itself in lives and money. Anyhow here 1s a YouTube video covering the subject quite well though not perfectly, and the reaction of the American is also interesting given his nations history with the subject.

User avatar
SKB
Senior Member
Posts: 7931
Joined: 30 Apr 2015, 18:35
England

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by SKB »

Here's the original video without the interruptions and reaction elements.


(Sargon of Akkad) 22nd April 2015

User avatar
Pseudo
Senior Member
Posts: 1732
Joined: 30 Apr 2015, 21:37
Tuvalu

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Pseudo »

I don't believe that the British Empire was wholly good or bad. It was complex and often contradictory, and like most complex things, we understand it better by embracing those complexities and contradictions and learning from them.

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

Lord Jim wrote: One of the key issues is that Africans sold African slaves to each other, the Arabs and eventually European countries. Rarely did Europeans mount slave "Hunting" expeditions as is sometimes portrayed in books and film.
This is completely irrelevant. It's like saying people who fence stolen goods are in no way responsible for burglaries.

~UNiOnJaCk~
Member
Posts: 780
Joined: 03 May 2015, 16:19
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by ~UNiOnJaCk~ »

RichardIC wrote: This is completely irrelevant. It's like saying people who fence stolen goods are in no way responsible for burglaries.
It's relevant in the context of the deliberate, politically motivated myopia surrouning the complexities of the history of African slavery and the West's involvement within it.

If intellectual honesty really were the intent of the people currently seeking to reappraise the history of slavery, there would be far greater acknowledgement of these complexities.

Such as it is, this current "movement" seems to not possess even a shred of sincerity however. I believe it's true motivations to be nothing less than fundamentally dishonest, if not even sinister.

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

Lord Jim wrote:the British are portrayed today is a very one sided and biased view in my opinion.
No it fecking isn't. The "we weren't the only ones that were at it," and "Africans were complicit" and the "we banned it first" arguments are at the very best a pathetic fig leaf.

It was evil. It was totally morally unjustifiable.

The history of the British Empire is complex but this particular bit of it isn't.

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

SKB wrote:Here's the original video without the interruptions and reaction elements.
Why isn't it a surprise that you're a Carl Benjamin fan?

Lord Jim
Senior Member
Posts: 7314
Joined: 10 Dec 2015, 02:15
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Lord Jim »

We didn't start slavery but we certainly ended it under the guns of the Royal Navy for everyone, blockading Both East ands East Africa. Slavery was and is evil, but it is still going on in the Middle and Far East under a different name, and it increased when the British Empire left those areas and countries gained their independence. Things are complicated but the British Empire is being depicted simply a bunch of slave traders which is biased to say the least. I am sure no one will defend slavery but context and the wider picture are essential if we are to debate this an any other complicated emotional subject.

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

Lord Jim wrote:We didn't start slavery but we certainly ended it
We ended it because slave owners were offered colossal amounts of compensation for their lost "property".

User avatar
ArmChairCivvy
Senior Member
Posts: 16312
Joined: 05 May 2015, 21:34
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

I've resettled on Wilberforce Street
... does that settle my inherited, historic debt?
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

User avatar
whitelancer
Member
Posts: 619
Joined: 05 May 2015, 22:19
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by whitelancer »

RichardIC wrote:We ended it because slave owners were offered colossal amounts of compensation for their lost "property".
What nonsense. We paid slave owners as an expedient in order to ban slavery within the Empire. That of course did not end the slave trade let alone slavery. Slavery had existed for thousands of years all around the world, and still exists to some extent even today. In all that time who had made a concerted effort to end it? It was only the UK that decided to end the slave trade and expended considerable time, money and lives to do so. Yet you effectively dismiss this.

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

whitelancer wrote:What nonsense. We paid slave owners as an expedient in order to ban slavery within the Empire. That of course did not end the slave trade let alone slavery. Slavery had existed for thousands of years all around the world, and still exists to some extent even today. In all that time who had made a concerted effort to end it? It was only the UK that decided to end the slave trade and expended considerable time, money and lives to do so. Yet you effectively dismiss this.
The penny just isn't dropping is it??

"We paid slave owners as an expedient"!!!

We rewarded them. It's like you would reward a rapist to stop them raping. And that analogy really isn't being overly sensationalist.

There is little virtue in stopping something you should never have been doing.

And of course slavery is eternal and universal. But there was something particularly pernicious about the Atlantic slave trade. For the century and a half or-so we Brits bossed it we took it to another level.

It was industrialised, it was trans-continental, it was run with a spread-sheet mentality by a people who professed to hold Christian ideals, and it was deeply, deeply racist. You can't say this enough. It was racist.

And the thing is this. Until pretty recently my opinion wasn't even controversial. It was totally mainstream. The revisionists are those who have come out of the woodwork in the last few years to try to justify the unjustifiable, mainly driven by online crankery.

User avatar
Tempest414
Senior Member
Posts: 5552
Joined: 04 Jan 2018, 23:39
France

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Tempest414 »

For me it is time we had a national museum to the slave trade it is time to lay out the facts and stop hiding behind the fog of miss truth we know how many people owned slaves we know how many ships were employed in this evil trade we know how many plantations there were we know how Black men women and children were used abused and left to died then simply replaced. This museum should show who ,why , how and where people were involved how much money was made and were that money has ended up today

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

Tempest414 wrote:For me it is time we had a national museum to the slave trade it is time to lay out the facts and stop hiding behind the fog of miss truth we know how many people owned slaves we know how many ships were employed in this evil trade we know how many plantations there were we know how Black men women and children were used abused and left to died then simply replaced. This museum should show who ,why , how and where people were involved how much money was made and were that money has ended up today
We don't always agree but totally with you on this.

Caribbean
Senior Member
Posts: 2784
Joined: 09 Jan 2016, 19:08
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Caribbean »

RichardIC wrote:We paid slave owners as an expedient in order to ban slavery within the Empire.
Regardless of your moral position (and I don't think anyone contributing on this site holds the position that slavery is anything but abhorrent), it's an established principle of law that, when a government bans something that was previously legal, it pays compensation. The same thing happened far more recently when handguns were banned (there are many in British society that regard personal ownership of firearms in in a similar light to slavery and regard those of us who have an interest in the defence of the realm as abhorrent, infantile and quite possibly mentally deficient in some way).

As for "Christian" values, I think you need to re-read the Bible - there's plenty of stuff in there about how to treat your slaves. Most of which was copied/ adapted from the Talmud and later into the Qu'ran.

@Tempest - agree with you on the museum - my big concern with the current vogue for tearing down statues is that, once they are all gone, there will be nothing left to mark that shameful period - the "protestors" will actually achieve the opposite of what they intend, by removing all evidence from the public realm, they will have airbrushed slavery out of existence - or to use an older phrase "whitewashed history".
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

Caribbean wrote:Regardless of your moral position (and I don't think anyone contributing on this site holds the position that slavery is anything but abhorrent), it's an established principle of law that, when a government bans something that was previously legal, it pays compensation. The same thing happened far more recently when handguns were banned
This equivalence only holds up if you regard slaves as property in the same way as handguns.

Of course the people who should have been compensated were the slaves, not their "owners".

User avatar
Tempest414
Senior Member
Posts: 5552
Joined: 04 Jan 2018, 23:39
France

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Tempest414 »

Yes it time to take them down and put them in a museum and simply say who they were and what they did. We do need them we need to put faces to this part of History we need to be open about it there is a lot of good that could come from this

User avatar
Tempest414
Senior Member
Posts: 5552
Joined: 04 Jan 2018, 23:39
France

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Tempest414 »

RichardIC wrote:Of course the people who should have been compensated were the slaves, not their "owners".
This will never happen in really terms now however one very small thing the UK could do is request from the African nations that we can come and take DNA samples as many tribes as possible to form a data bases and then offer to those who may think they have a link to the slave trade a free DNA test in the hope we can answer for many the burning question were do I come from this

Caribbean
Senior Member
Posts: 2784
Joined: 09 Jan 2016, 19:08
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Caribbean »

RichardIC wrote:This equivalence only holds up if you regard slaves as property in the same way as handguns.
The equivalence holds completely. They were regarded as property. Just as a woman was regarded as her husband's property and a child was regarded as property of their parents (and continued to be for some years after 1807, or indeed 1833). What you or I think about that is irrelevant to the argument - we have arrived on the scene nearly 200 years too late for our views to matter. The attitudes and opinions of the people of the time were what they were - and were such that it eventually resulted in the abolition of a trade that very few participated in (at the time of abolition, there were 46,000 who claimed compensation and around 150 ships employed in the triangular trade, out of a population of more than 13 million).

All we can do is ensure that the future is better than the past. It is the current generations that have framed the debate that has seen what were deemed to be acceptable practices defined as "modern slavery" on a worldwide basis, like indentured servitude, debt bondage (a central part of human trafficking), convict labour and others. Our challenge is to enforce that, in the same way that our forebears enforced the ban on the slave trade, reformed UK practices and exported their concepts of democracy and Common Law (empowering others to change their own societies).
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

Caribbean wrote:The attitudes and opinions of the people of the time were what they were - and were such that it eventually resulted in the abolition of a trade that very few participated in (at the time of abolition, there were 46,000 who claimed compensation and around 150 ships employed in the triangular trade, out of a population of more than 13 million).
That's just nonsense. Entire industries existed to support the slave trade.

Who do you think made the slave ships?

Half of the West Midlands was employed making what was effectively the currency for slavery in Africa - cheap firearms. At the height of the slave trade 150,000 British manufactured guns per year were exported to West Africa. We weren't just stealing their people, we were fueling the constant state of warfare that was required for the slave industry to thrive.

There were factories exporting slave chains to the Americas long after Britain had abolished slavery.

Where did plantation equipment and machinery come from? What made the ports of Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow rich?

Finance!

User avatar
Pseudo
Senior Member
Posts: 1732
Joined: 30 Apr 2015, 21:37
Tuvalu

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Pseudo »

Tempest414 wrote:For me it is time we had a national museum to the slave trade it is time to lay out the facts and stop hiding behind the fog of miss truth we know how many people owned slaves we know how many ships were employed in this evil trade we know how many plantations there were we know how Black men women and children were used abused and left to died then simply replaced. This museum should show who ,why , how and where people were involved how much money was made and were that money has ended up today
A few years ago I was in the Deutsches Historisches Museum and at the time they had an exhibition on the German Empire that was pretty brutal in its frankness about the treatment of native populations. I'd be quite keen to see the UK do something like that.

Caribbean
Senior Member
Posts: 2784
Joined: 09 Jan 2016, 19:08
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Caribbean »

RichardIC wrote:That's just nonsense. Entire industries existed to support the slave trade.
I can see that this is going to degenerate into a sterile argument over the meaning of "participate".

For the record, I do not consider an ordinary working man of the time, who made a bolt that happens to end up as part of a musket lock, or even a manacle as a "participant " in the slave trade, nor do I consider the average factory worker who spun the cotton produced by slaves into cloth to be so). Their only alternative to doing as they were told to by the bosses was to starve in a ditch, or die of disease in a workhouse, alongside their family. To include their numbers as participants in the slave trade is, frankly, both offensive and dishonest.

In Scotland, miners and salters were, from 1606 to 1799, bound for life to the business owner, as was "any child that worked one day beyond their 12th birthday"). Do you think they were "participants", even when their coal was used to power the steam engines that powered the looms that spun the cotton? If they ran from their mine, they were charged with theft (of themselves, apparently) and could be hung, or sent to the Colonies as convict labour (wearing the same manacles as were used by the slave trade - it's often forgotten that many of the first slaves in the American colonies came from Britain, either as convicts or as indentured labourers). It was only after James 1st came to the throne and started incorporating elements of Scottish law into English law that the concept of "bound for life" and later "inherited state of slavery" came into being.

The aristocracy, those businesses and factory owners who knowingly sold goods into the slave trade are the "participants", those who invested in the trade are participants and those who bought and sold slaves are participants, as are those that spun the lies about Africans not being human (so by implication having no soul), having no spoken language and being incapable of more than obeying simple instructions. Their numbers are in the tiny minority when considered against the entire population of Britain, most of whom had no idea what was being perpetrated in their name.
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

User avatar
RichardIC
Senior Member
Posts: 1371
Joined: 10 May 2015, 16:59
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by RichardIC »

Three things only to say.

Any assertion that the number of British people who had skin in the slave game was tiny doesn't hold water. It permeated all levels of society, regardless of the level of self-awareness, and quite frankly it's pretty much impossible to gauge that with any degree of accuracy.

By the end of the sixteenth century, in very broad terms, you couldn't keep a white person as a slave (I get your points above). But 150 years later you could keep a battalion of black people as slaves and treat them any way you wished with total impunity. Which is why the slave trade was so fundamentally racist and why Black Lives do Matter. That does not mean I support the tearing down of statues, but it does mean any attempt at contorting an apologia for the slave trade needs to be faced down and why black people don't need to just get over it because they still live with the consequences.

Thirdly is the whole silly premise that this thread is based on. That somehow British involvement in the slave trade was in any way more benign because white people didn't actually get their hands dirty that much so it's fine. It's ahistorical trash.

Just that.

~UNiOnJaCk~
Member
Posts: 780
Joined: 03 May 2015, 16:19
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by ~UNiOnJaCk~ »

I'd argue that it is more ahistorical to project our modern moral code upon the figures and events of at least 150+ years ago (depending on your frame of reference).

As a practice slavery is rightly recognised as an abberation now, but you would be deeply, deeply mistaken if you allowed yourself to believe that the practice was widely viewed in the same light in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

It was only by the 19th century that the moral movement against slavery really began to gather pace. Where such sentiment had existed prior to this point, it most assuredly was as pockets on the fringes of popular thought. There are some examples of particularly enlightened indiviuals who spoke out against slavery before this point, but they are comparitive rarities.

Long story short, it's not our place to moralise about history; certainly if you have any pretence of actually trying to earnestly understand it. It's completely the wrong starting point as a line of enquiry.

Also, if you follow the above logic to its proper conclusion, the workers in the field who harvested the grain that went on to be baked into bread which was served to the crews of slave ships, are as culpable as the slavers themselves, no? I'd suggest that is simply ludicrous. If that's your definition of culpability, there wouldn't be a single person that you could not implicate in some way - even down to the youngest child - if you tried hard enough.

Lord Jim
Senior Member
Posts: 7314
Joined: 10 Dec 2015, 02:15
United Kingdom

Re: Rewriting history, "Britain's Empire of Evil".

Post by Lord Jim »

People do realise that the slave trade in Africa existed centuries before the Europeans became involved don't they, and continues on the east coast of Africa for years after despite the Royal Navy's best efforts. At least we didn't do what the Slave owners in North Africa and the Middle East did, which was to castrate all male slaves and also remember many of the Armies of Middle Eastern empires were made up of slaves as well such as the Turkish Janissaries for example.

Slavery was a global industry for centuries, it was just the way thing were done, Rome couldn't function without its majority slave population but should we ask Italy to tear down all its statues to its Emperors and Generals which brought back thousands upon thousands of slave form their conquests? What about Portugal, the biggest slave owning country in Europe, which transported nearly twice as many slaves to the new world as the British Empire, should we demand that they demolish all the building built with money made form their colonies in South America. Has Brazil, once it became independent, but still kept importing slaves from Africa apologised to the parts of its population descended form these people, I do not know?

If we apply todays morals to past events, how far or how recently do we go. Are we going to put all Bomber Command personnel on trail for war crimes, because the carpet bombing of civilians certainly classes as a war crime today. As stated above does Italy owe the UK compensation for the thousands of slaves taken from this country during the time of the Roman Empire, let alone the brutal acts the occupying Legions committed?

We cannot and must not forget what happened under the British Empire, but the last slaves owned by British Estates were freed nearly two hundred years ago. Yes those that emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean are descended from people transported there against there will, but their homelands now have their independence in their own countries and with a few exceptions control their own destinies.

Why do people who are second or third generation families who originally emigrated in the 50's and 60's so obsessed with events nearly 200 years ago. Discrimination is a crime and had been for decades and so should not be happening now. We are all British on this island and should share the same values and morals. There should be zero negative discrimination just as there should be zero positive discrimination.

The establishment of a National Museum telling the whole story for slavery should be established to inform people of our past but it must not make a moral judgement on those involved without this being balanced by an understanding of why things were the way they were. We still had the Death Penalty after slavery was abolished but for decades it was considered the normal thing to do in response to certain crimes, yet today this also is seen by many to be abhorrent.

Post Reply