RESTITUTION: Saying sorry about slavery — is that sufficient?

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It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says, ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it’.

. But there have been yet more recent examples of slavery, even after the movement towards its abolition in the 19th century.

But beyond the Dutch presence in West Africa, there were other European slave trading forts along the African coast operated by the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Brandeburgers and Danes, all designed for the purpose of obtaining captives and sending them on to colonial territories — enforced, involuntary, and lifetime labour crucial for the success of plantations and in mines.

But there is also the legacy of the Omani sultanates strung out all along the East African coast . There is also the less often discussed role of African kingdoms which were, themselves, complicit in this trafficking of humanity, as they obtained captives via warfare or through something approaching a trade in human flesh and then sold their captives to the conveyers of those enslaved persons on to their dismal fates elsewhere.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the extension of slavery into new territories became the proximate cause of the American Civil War that ran from 1861 to 1865. But wait a minute: there is this astonishing story. A half-decade ago, the very prestigious Georgetown University came face-to-face with the deeply uncomfortable realisation that their institution had been complicit in selling over 200 enslaved persons from the school’s farm in Eastern Maryland on to the far more brutal sugarcane plantation landscape of Louisiana. The funds thus raised had staved off the school’s imminent bankruptcy.

The report went on to say, “While the creation of the task force is a bold first step, much remains unclear about whether lawmakers will ultimately throw their political weight behind reparations proposals that will require vast financial resources from the state.”

 

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