Slave Trade Apology

gue_barium

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Bizarre as this might sound, I think this analogy would fit the argument for reparation exactly, if the murderer's arms be returned to the victim's children, if they were stolen from the victim's house: along with payment in compensation.

I know that sounds daft and nonsensical, but what I mean is...

What I mean is, in straight terms, we're talking about property law. Firstly, we're talking about reparation for confiscated West African lands, peoples and chattels, the details concerning which were recorded extensively by the English East India Company and equivalent private companies in Europe. Many of these records are preserved to this day, with names of all slaves and their owners meticulously documented, along with all data relating to how these slaves were used in labour.

Secondly, considering that human labour was commodified, to use a Marxian term, as a means of capitalist production, slaves' lives became property, and part of the real machinery of proto-Empire for European businessmen. Slaves and their labour became other people's property, every bit as much as the material they produced.

Their labour, as well as the money made in their transportation, created the wealth of dominant banks that thrive to this day. If you believe in capitalism, and inherited wealth, would you not like to see the sons and daughters get what the statute books (and a bit of DNA testing) show they're owed? Slave owners were compensated for their losses: why shouldn't the families of those who never received the wealth of their work?

In this sense, the issue is no longer about Blair apologising for the sins of English private companies from 1600 to the early nineteenth century, but about banks coughing up what is arguably owed to the families of slaves (and British subjects, importantly, since they were subservient to the monarch of the Realm). The problem is, have the banks actually got the stock behind the money, anymore, if such suits were pursued?


Now, going back to reborncareerist's point: what about those Africans who did deals with the slave traders. Umm, I think we'd be talking about a vaguer type of suit for personal damages here, rather than a more orthodox claim against loss of earnings? I'm not a lawyer, my brother is, but I'm just trying to think this through. I think the real issue of reparation would work on the lines of: "I can prove my great- great- great- great- etc was a slave bought by the British, and I have DNA evidence he came from such and such a place where trading was common. I have seen the statute books showing how much his labour made for certain parties. As a British subject, offered a passport and nationality as a Caribbean (originally of African descent and therefore part of the accumulated plunder of the Commonwealth), whilst under British rule and therefore automatically by right, before arriving in Britain in post-colonial times, I have a claim to inheritance, under British law."

Something like that, anyway. Someone who knows British law properly will put me right here, but I think that's how it goes.

Nicely thought-through, Mr. Finsbury.

hippiemom

gue_barium wrote:

How does this have any bearing on America today?
The Native Americans were allocated their reservations, and most are still there today.

Again, I was specifically replying to a post addressing the issue of the Jew with the stolen art, not native Americans or slaves or anything else.

gue_barium

hippiemom wrote:

Again, I was specifically replying to a post addressing the issue of the Jew with the stolen art, not native Americans or slaves or anything else.

I'm going to go write a poem, or something.