Some other buyer would have taken them if they werent shipped out, and Western (or Arab) traders were just changing the ownership and location, the sins of the slave-raiders being theirs alone to bear. Again, not that these market forces absolve the sellers of a moral responsibility, but there is an argument occasionally deployed that slaves would have been slaves anyway. 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 David Olusoga, 49, is a television presenter and historian. He is the author of the 2016 book Black and British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award 2017 and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2017. Tull played professional football for Northampton but instead of signing up for Glasgow Rangers, he enlisted. "They look to history not just for inspiration and comfort, not just for heroes and for glorious chapters; they look for history expecting to find challenging stories, painful stories, dark truths, villains as well as heroes. No doubt life expectancy of a slave was shorter than that for a free man. David Olusoga's Family David Olusoga, age 49 was born to a Nigerian father and a British mother. The thing we British are ancestrally responsible for is beginning and continuing to pursue the extinction of the sordid business of slavery. Rapidly promoted to sergeant, then second lieutenant, he led white British troops into action and died in 1918, having been mentioned in despatches and recommended for the Military Cross. Might, in this case, being 100% of the debating point. It was far too real to her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr_Gide, 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). My family did nothing. The UK, Norway, Benelux, Spain, Malta and Switzerland are, I believe, the only western European countries to set it at 16. Id say this to Mr Olusoga. Have you ever read the account by Ibn Fadlan of a Viking funeral in Russia? Ironically, one of the sources we can turn to in order to learn more is his own accounts of late 17th-century Jamaica. There is the Push argument and the Pull argument. I do not see what is different between a plantation in Africa and a plantation in Virginia. Thats why we get it. Probably few other societies had as much chance of buying freedom. I have that estimate saved and ready to be critiqued as part of a larger project. Instead he has become a campaigner working to discredit Britain, the country that has educated him, promoted him and brought him fame and acceptance. So is Richard Murphy. A House Through Time returned to BBC Two in May for its third season, and once again is fronted by historian extraordinaire David Olusoga. "I have," he admits, "a habit of . If you are wracked with guilt, ashamed of your forebears, do it! The problem with slavery is that it left us with their descendents and weak minded White populations. And that still stands even if there really are a bunch of torturing murderers out there too. Over 1000 years in Britain. Joining them is Psychologist and Lecturer at Lancaster University, Dr David Tod, for a fascinating conversation about the psychology of acting. One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestmannaeyjar, Slavery in England definitely continued for a couple of generations after the Norman Conquest and Bristol was a major export centre, though there were attempts to ban the export trade in particular (https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds has some interesting quotes from the time). BLM is after political or financial advantages because of slavery. The answer is money. But Ill tell you what, slavery and human sacrifice, still awful. Black and British: A Forgotten History at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too.. Nobody will stop you, honest. His black half can get the half-payment direct from his white half. Just how much should Olusoga receive? Reasonable estimates have some 50% of the inhabitants of the Sokoto Caliphate as late as the late 19th cent being slaves. Rather the constitution banned the slave trade and so it become economically worth it to make sure slaves lived longer. Both groups today, especially the former, could reasonably claim historic persecution has reduced their present income and wealth. The argument isnt whether historical slavery was right or wrong or who should accept responsibility for it. Guess wed have to print it. If one disproves his assertions would slavery then be okay? He previously worked at JP Morgan for 18 years in a number of senior roles and was . Required fields are marked *. David Olusoga meets Janice Haber and her family, the descendents of Jewish . One in which enslaved people suffered and even died from malnutrition, as the economics of the slave trade meant that it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them than it was to provide them with food. Country Star Kacey Musgraves: Voting for Trump Is an Act of Violence. at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too. There is no reason to think one system was more or less brutal than the other. Peter Pan & Wendy is a live-action reimagining of the J.M . His rhetoric is to inflame the reader. Dr Peter Olusoga is a senior psychology lecturer at Sheffield Hallam university. He updates Fryer, citing radioisotope analysis of skeletons and craniometrics, which support written documentation of Aurelian Moors guarding Hadrians Wall and settling in places such as Yorkshire. In 1787, they met in London and set up the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Very often shaped by the political, technological and economic forces of the times if the Western way of life had remained utterly dependent on Roman-style slavery, Im not sure wed ever have abolished it even amongst our own inhabitants. But those were in those long-lost days when democrats and republicans could talk to each other and agree to disagree while both leaving the conversation a little the wiser. It built slave forts on the African coast, some such as Bunce Island in Sierra Leone furnished with a rape house. What is their strongest argument? But it is Olusoga who keeps insisting that its the Brits who are uniquely responsible.. Olusoga was born in Lagos to a White mother and a Nigerian father who, I hate to say nautrally, did a runner. not at all to disparage your ancestors GC. Get back to me in seven years, when youre ready to order. It doesnt end with the parties saying Well that was pleasantly intellectually stimulating, now lets have a nice game of cricket Youre opponents are not playing by the same rules as you are. If you had spare cash or could borrow, investment in slavery was a sure winner, never mind slave rebellions or hurricanes that destroyed cane fields. Pretty much everybody in the West is against slavery. He was born in Nigeria but arrived in the . What do you think their stongest argument is? "Incorporating the stories of people like Equiano is merely part of a process of looking at all of British history; not just being selective, not only going to the chapters that make us feel good about ourselves or proud.". His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, details how he was sold into slavery aged 11, his experience of travelling the world as slave to a Royal Navy officer - who renamed him Gustavus Vassa - and how he bought his freedom from his final master, an English merchant in Montserrat. 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. 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? "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. "Equiano is the most important voice that we have from the British experience of slavery and the slave trade," he said. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. 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. We pretend we do not like slavery but actually we do not like slave traders. If slavery really mattered theyd be campaigning for reparations from the blacks and arabs/moslems who were doing it long before the white man arrived in Africa and was far more devastating. So this race baiter can try his guilt trip on someone else. Equiano is also mentioned in Incomparable World, a novel by SI Martin, which was selected by Booker award-winning author Bernardine Evaristo for her Black Britain: Writing Back series. The rest apart from Ireland (17, partly due to influence of aforementioned Patrick) set it younger. is that the extra demand distorted the market, led directly to more armed slave-raiding expeditions against rival tribes and so on.. When Olusoga recalled the experience before television cameras last year, he wept. Women, denied a meaningful role in politics, formed their own organisations, writing tracts, pamphlets and poems, gathering signatures for petitions and fundraising: At certain times and in certain places they were the engine room of the movement.. Thankfully the Woke have gifted us an all purpos3e response to this sort of crap. And I dont think this is what reparations campaigners are calling for either, as I understand it their argument includes systematic legacy issues not just the period of slavery itself, so the harm relates more directly to them not just their ancestors. I still find arguing the toss, or watching others doing so, interesting partly because it shows how the viewpoints are divergent, how many arguments are self-interested, what social, cultural and economic forces are at work behind it all. I learned the hard way. Theres an argument about judging people by the standard of their times, though even in the 1500s moral and religious objections to the slave trade had been made and the rationale of crimes against humanity is that some things are so abhorrent they could never truly be legal no matter what moral code the perpetrators justified themselves with. Hes insisting that a household headed by a 21 year old black should have the average wealth of all white households. The Westman Islands of Iceland have an interesting history in terms of European slavery a major rebellion of presumably mostly Irish (Westmen) slaves was put down there in the typically brutal Scandinavian manner, hence the name, but in the 1600s the local inhabitants were themselves enslaved by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers, from where a few were ransomed back and one wrote about the experience. 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. Hundreds of White women raped every day. Do I feel like I had anything to do it? Everyone was. Grew up in Quedlinburg. The evidence of this is that seasoned slaves, those exposed to the environment, sold for up to 50% more than new ones. Thats what I dont like about the angle of Tims header. I had a girlfriend whose mother was a Nazi. Sure. Even Bill Clinton had affinity for the USA. Married an American GI after the war. Nor do I think that sugar is worse than cotton. But you need a different approach if you dont think great-grandkids of the Confederacy are still fair game.) I imagine few do. Over 1000 years in Britain. . Get back to us when your sin/privilege is expunged. Its entirely possible to think something was awful without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt or personal responsibility. That was a bad experience but he should know that you cannot judge a whole country by what happened when he was young. I just dont really get what Olusoga is saying. And tolerance is not a given. They may not be happy about Dresden or Hiroshima but their lives are much better. As for the future, the University of Manchester professor says younger generations give him hope. But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided. White communities suffer huge losses from Black crime. The South Sea bubble, the greatest financial crash of the 18th century, was intimately connected to Britains dealings with Africa, though this is rarely acknowledged by historians. June 16, 2020 - 20:29 BST Aisha Nozari. A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history - sent every Wednesday. Black and British: A Forgotten History addresses one of the greatest silences in British historiography. Sugar was king: originally a luxury, it became one of the main sources of calories for the British poor. The publication in 1852 of Uncle Toms Cabin, by the American abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, swelled national sympathy for the plight of black slaves. Why are these characterizations needed? Youre right, MBE. people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes After decades of complaints, the Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1712 and, Olusoga writes, Independent traders were turned loose upon the shores of Africa. These traders had argued (stone-blind to irony) that the right to enslave Africans was a defining feature of English freedom and that the Royal African Company had breached their status as free-born Englishmen. The Coldest Case in Laramie: yet another bleak true crime podcast, From Sophie Mackintosh to Stephen Moss: new books reviewed in short, Universal Credit falls short of covering the bare essentials. 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. Theres probably more mileage in my country, or at least its historical incarnation, fought against it because unlike the actual people involved, the state is still around. Get back to us when youve developed your historicalguiltometer. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. But its still awful, even on a historical scale. Viking Dublin was a major slave-trading centre (English, Irish, Scots, anyone else they could get their hands on). But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided, so I dont think the traders can be given a pass on this front either. (and white people was pretty much the British). White people are unique in ending slavery across the world*. (Im just presenting the case here in reality there are obviously some big questions about the logic of Nuremberg etc, just as there are questions about how judges in Common Law occasionally summon up things as if they had always and forever been a part of the Law, albeit previously unrecorded, rather than something the judge just made up.). In America few were castrated, which is why there are now >40 million descendants there. Vikings took slaves, including exporting Anglo-Saxons (you must have heard the quote Non Angli, sed Angeli about the English slaves being sold in Italy? It costs money to replace them and after a famine the price of slaves would rise. The many African-American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, who visited Britain from the 1840s onwards, were well received and, again, thousands of people greeted them and raised money to support their cause. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards.. 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. And so many hundreds of thousands of British workers were directly dependent on slavery (from sailors to those who built, rigged and repaired ships) that it was easy to turn a blind eye to the inhumanity. Thousands of petitions were presented to parliament. 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.". He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. Flyover Americans arent going to take it. Id say theres enormous dangers in treating this as if it was some public school debating society gig. I dont think the traders can be given a pass on this front either., Just means they werent alone in being in the wrong.. His current research focuses on stress, burnout, and wellbeing in sports, with a particular interest in high-performance environments and elite coaching. Blacks like Mr Olusoga despite endlessly banging on about it seem to overlook the fact that they are in a minority. Not sure theyd do that with modern sensibilities mind you. David Olusoga is a 49-year-old historian and presenter Credit: Getty - Contributor David Olusoga is a British Nigerian historian, broadcaster and writer. Africans had a demand for female slaves. But morals are very transient things. They have a game plan & youre falling for it. 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. Had a vault for the more inflammatory pieces. The Sokoto Caliphate probably had as many slaves and a lot fewer free men as the Old South. David Olusoga Olusoga has written stand-alone history books as well as those accompanying his television series. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has recently staged a play called the Meaning of Zong about the massacre of 132 enslaved Africans aboard the slave ship Zong in 1781 and the impact it had on Equiano. A fifty quid note in the hand of the first black bloke you encounter. But Muslims were enslaving white Europeans into Africa long before the Atlantic route, usually castrating the males. For some peculiar reason possibly because theres a section of Western society has become very insecure about its own position its being some credence. If we went down this route thered be goodness knows how much fun and games to be had with legal claims over the treatment of Irish by Cromwell, the clearing of the Highlands and so on, before you even get on to the globe-spanning imperial stuff. 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". It's possibly a deeper change than some people realise because I don't think what we're living through is a series of political events; I think we're living through a generational shift," he says. 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