Reckon they found commenters guessing which parts of a hypothetical argument were meant all part of the fun, In many respects youre one of the posters here whose views on morality Im closest to our personal moralities probably being quite far apart, but I recognise mine as very much the product of my upbringing and surrounding society and know enough about other places and times to realise just how contingent that makes them. Two men managed to escape and were rescued, but not before my great, great, grandfather was beaten, starved and worked to death, his body thrown into the jungle for the animals and insects to dispose of. So he calls himself a Geordie. It was far too real to her. Ive always agreed that the Africans should pay reparations to the rest of us for dumping all those people they wanted to get rid of on us. Used to be on a long-dead and much missed forum where the topics of debate ranged far wider than they do here (as did the viewpoints I think it would be useful if us right-wing brexity mob didnt chase off the sensible non-right-wing non-brexity types so much). 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). Pretty sure if you could, implausibly, trace my family tree through various not-very-literate eras youd pass through at least one Anglo-Saxon who owned a bunch of Britons. I think a case could be made. Full text must be online somewhere but theres an extract at https://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-real-vikings/articles/eyewitness-to-the-vikings. Youre right, MBE. Britain should be proud of helping to stop (African to America) slavery, like the Republican Party and unlike the Democrats. Various among the societies that were agglomerated into Nigeria were more or less involved in that slave trade from the supply end. A fifty quid note in the hand of the first black bloke you encounter. At the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Britain was granted the right to supply slaves to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, a right then passed on to the South Sea Company. 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. History is just one awful thing after another. That someone did something 200 years ago means double ought nothing. 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. Video, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3: The Meaning of Zong, BBC Bitesize: The Zong 1781-1783 - The triangular trade, during a debate on Black History and Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Explosive found in check-in luggage at US airport, Fungus case forces Jack Daniels to halt construction, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine, Fire knocks out half of Argentina's power grid, Havana Syndrome unlikely to have hostile cause - US, Starbucks illegally fired workers over union - judge. Sugar was king: originally a luxury, it became one of the main sources of calories for the British poor. It happened. That involved killing the adult men. 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. Like I said before, tolerance is in the gift of the powerful. Olusoga, who is half-Nigerian, traces this focus to his mother telling him when he was a child that Nigerian soldiers served in World War II. Peter Olusoga. 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. Olusoga brilliantly reveals such contradictions in British society. The Barbados slave code of 1661 stripped Africans of all human rights, and set out ways in which they were to be punished, to exert control over their labour (mutilation of the face, slitting of nostrils, castration, execution). 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. And yes, grand scheme of things, forced choice between living in a central Asian city about to be captured by ticked-off Mongols and an African tribal group about to be captured by profit-hungry slavers then fine, I take the latter hands down. David then moved with his mother and three siblings in the north-east of the UK. Dr Peter Olusoga is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. It has been reissued by publishing house Hodder and Prof Olusoga has written the foreword. In the 15th and 16th centuries, thousands of pounds of gold were shipped to Europe. Not many remember anything about segregation either. Then, in October, came a breakthrough. We do not know how great the demand for women was. That was a bad experience but he should know that you cannot judge a whole country by what happened when he was young. Within the EU the two most common ages of consent are 14 and 15 (if Ive done my counting correctly), though in some but not all cases thats with additional restrictions on permissible age gaps. The enslaved Africans had to wait another five years for their freedom and were not given a penny. Writing in english is cultural appropriation so STFU. It seems absurd to me that anyone should be concerned about what happened 200 or 500 years ago. Looking at what happened in Haiti or Jamaica or chunks of Latin America, I dont find either well, could have been much worse or what do you expect, Early Modern West Europeans, how could they have known better? to be particularly convincing responses. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion? The Sokoto Caliphate probably had as many slaves and a lot fewer free men as the Old South. There is plenty of slavery about we just do not call it that. And he might not find the society withdraws it nearly as comfortable for him to live in. Thats why when the question is raised, I always point out that they owe me lots and lots of money. (As the first person to mention the Sokoto Caliphate ahh, forget it.). Married an American GI after the war. Joining them is Psychologist and Lecturer at Lancaster University, Dr David Tod, for a fascinating conversation about the psychology of acting. . Or they may discover how little black lives do matter. So my advice would be, for his own health, STFU. He presented the recent series of A House Through Time on BBC 2, and Black and British: A Forgotten History. Just how much should Olusoga receive? My great, great, grandfather was one. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has . The race obsessed Department of Education goes to considerable lengths to distinguish Caribbeans and West Africans. What is their strongest argument? Everyone was. Grew up in Quedlinburg. Sugar plantations were bad. Africans had a demand for female slaves. Yet American slave-produced raw cotton continued to feed the 4,500 mills of Lancashire. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. And tolerance is not a given. Like the Nigerian slavers who enslaved and sold the slaves, you mean? Id say theres enormous dangers in treating this as if it was some public school debating society gig. I havent the faintest idea whether slavery in the Roman controlled areas of Britain was more along the continental Roman model or retained Celtic characteristics. And this of course neatly addresses MBEs arguments. Definitely didnt die out with the Romans. So is Richard Murphy. It isnt going to happen anyway. 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.". Fought to STOP southern independence. In the USA? and while the responsible state still exists, Theres a fundamental weakness with all theories of universal law or justice, which is that across time and space, the human conception of what is right and just seems to be extremely varied and rarely (to modern Western eyes) pleasant.. What would happen to that money, who knows, but as its (or was) your money, thats between you and your grifter of choice. Thy did not try to grow or raise the next generation. Which of those societies does Olusogas ancestry come from? His rhetoric is to inflame the reader. But oddly enough, people like Olusoga havent given me the cash yet. Olusoga was born in Lagos to a White mother and a Nigerian father - who, I hate to say nautrally, did a runner. Not a big fan of the odd human sacrifice Im afraid, even though I might just be of very partial Scandinavian descent myself. (At least in our society) Get over it. Now sixteen sounds about okay to me if youre going to stick a limit somewhere, but then being British I suppose Im more likely to think the system Im accustomed to is normal and reasonable. I brought up paedophilia to demonstrate that there are things not worth my time. 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). 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. (and white people was pretty much the British). Or anything to do with slavery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxc5ENT8ajg, https://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-real-vikings/articles/eyewitness-to-the-vikings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestmannaeyjar, https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm, Apparently Essay Mills Must Be Made Illegal, Why Oxfam Can Go Boil Their Heads Over Vaccine Patents, The real point about climate change is how cheap the solution is, The excellent Tim Worstall- The Register, Tim Worstall is a darn good economist- Don Boudreaux, Tim Worstall, you pendant- Polly Toynbee, .more sensible than most right wing nutjob bloggersBob Piper. 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. No doubt life expectancy of a slave was shorter than that for a free man. Fair point. Id say this to Mr Olusoga. (Britain expended blood and treasure on ending the slave trade, and thereby paid its moral debt already is one way of trying to resolve it, but rather unsatisfactory at righting the wrongs done to those who had already fallen victim to the trade.) Like I need to hand my cash to the next lass of Rus descent I see, lest she remind me of some unlucky slave-girl that may or may not have perished at the hands of my maybe-ancestors? 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. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. They did not pay for them and were going to kill a lot of them anyway. In that moment, his interest in history overlapped. His book is a product of that childhood terror, and partly an exploration of his condition as a black Briton. 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. Needless to say, the national mood changed. That was when the Democrats were still Americans. There is the Push argument and the Pull argument. Video, 00:02:30Should black history be taught all year round? 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. 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