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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAs Glasgow University owns up to slavery wealth, others urged to follow - great read
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/22/glasgow-university-wealth-from-transatlantic-slave-trade-reparations?CMP=share_btn_tw>Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotlands first black professor, has welcomed a groundbreaking report into how Glasgow University benefited from the proceeds of slavery. He said it posed uncomfortable questions for British society as a whole and called on institutions that had profited from the slave trade to make amends.
The report, published last week by Glasgow University, is based on more than two years of research and reveals that the institution benefited directly from the slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries to the tune of almost £200m in todays money.
The university has now launched a wide-ranging and ambitious reparative justice programme. Ironically, the university was at the forefront of the movement in the 19th century to abolish slavery. It will now create a centre for the study of slavery and a memorial or tribute in the name of the enslaved. It is also working to establish ties with the University of the West Indies.
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As Glasgow University owns up to slavery wealth, others urged to follow - great read (Original Post)
malaise
Oct 2018
OP
You'd have no idea how many benefitted from not just the slave trade, but in the act of trying to
OnDoutside
Oct 2018
#4
Thanks, actually you might be interested in this too. I remember seeing this as a kid.
OnDoutside
Oct 2018
#8
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)1. Thank you for posting. I had no idea UK universities had benefitted
malaise
(269,157 posts)3. A good friend was involved in the early reporting
OnDoutside
(19,970 posts)4. You'd have no idea how many benefitted from not just the slave trade, but in the act of trying to
abolish slavery in the UK, the British Government basically had to buy the slave owners off. There was a fantastic BBC series on just this topic, about 3 or 4 years ago. Britains Forgotten Slave Owners, two episodes, presented by David Olusoga
The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed
The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britains slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their property. The compensation commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m the government had set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn.
The compensation of Britains 46,000 slave owners was the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. Not only did the slaves receive nothing, under another clause of the act they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four years after their supposed liberation. In effect, the enslaved paid part of the bill for their own manumission.
The records of the Slave Compensation Commission are an unintended byproduct of the scheme. They represent a near complete census of British slavery as it was on 1 August, 1834, the day the system ended. For that one day we have a full list of Britains slave owners. All of them. The T71s tell us how many slaves each of them owned, where those slaves lived and toiled, and how much compensation the owners received for them. Although the existence of the T71s was never a secret, it was not until 2010 that a team from University College London began to systematically analyse them. The Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, which is still continuing, is led by Professor Catherine Hall and Dr Nick Draper, and the picture of slave ownership that has emerged from their work is not what anyone was expecting.
The large slave owners, the men of the West India interest, who owned huge estates from which they drew vast fortunes, appear in the files of the commission. The man who received the most money from the state was John Gladstone, the father of Victorian prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. He was paid £106,769 in compensation for the 2,508 slaves he owned across nine plantations, the modern equivalent of about £80m. Given such an investment, it is perhaps not surprising that William Gladstones maiden speech in parliament was in defence of slavery.
The records show that for the 218 men and women he regarded as his property, Charles Blair, the great-grandfather of George Orwell, was paid the more modest sum of £4,442 the modern equivalent of about £3m. There are other famous names hidden within the records. Ancestors of the novelist Graham Greene, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott all received compensation for slaves. As did a distant ancestor of David Cameron. But what is most significant is the revelation of the smaller-scale slave owners.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-history-slavery-buried-scale-revealed
malaise
(269,157 posts)5. Great post
Met Catherine Hall - at a Stuart Hall conference
OnDoutside
(19,970 posts)8. Thanks, actually you might be interested in this too. I remember seeing this as a kid.
Montserrat has a very interesting history linked to Ireland
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)6. Thank you very much for posting these links
OnDoutside
(19,970 posts)7. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)2. K&R...