SourceJamaica set to seek compensation from Britain over slave trade
LONDON — Jamaica is preparing to request compensation from Britain over its role in the transatlantic slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries — when at least 600,000 Africans were shipped to the Caribbean as enslaved people — Jamaican officials told Reuters.
Jamaica long served as a key node in a slave trade network that spanned continents, driven by Spain and then Britain.
The country, a former British colony independent since 1962, is set to seek reparations in a petition submitted to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister of sports, youth and culture, told Reuters her government would seek “reparatory justice in all forms” to “repair the damages that our ancestors experienced.”
“Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labor to the benefit of the British Empire,” she said, but did not divulge the exact sum to be sought.
The petition, Reuters reported, is connected to a motion filed by Jamaican lawmaker Mike Henry to seek more than $10 billion, his estimate of how much enslavers received in compensation after Britain abolished slavery, freeing an estimated 800,000 enslaved Black people in 1834. Britain made those disbursements after taking out a mammoth loan, the interest on which it finished paying only in 2015.
Enslaved people transported to the Caribbean were forced to work in dire conditions on sugar and crop plantations, where deadly diseases were rife. As many as 20 million African men, women and children were enslaved during this period, according to estimates.
Many plantation owners resided in England, with established slave-based industries across the Caribbean, funneling wealth to the British Empire.
“I have fought against this all my life, against chattel slavery which has dehumanized human life,” Henry told Reuters.
The Jamaican government did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the petition.
Like many countries that were once part of the British Empire, Jamaica is part of the Commonwealth, an association of nations, which Elizabeth heads.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement that swept much of the world last summer, many countries have seen renewed impetus to confront their own dark and violent histories of racism and inequality.
In Britain, as in the United States, debates have unfolded about how the history of slavery is taught in schools.
In the English city of Bristol, which was once at the heart of mass sugar importations, a statue of British politician Edward Colston was toppled during protests that erupted following the death of George Floyd last year. Colston was responsible for enslaving tens of thousands of people.
Demonstrators chanting “Black lives matter” yanked the monument from its plinth before dumping it into the brown waters of a nearby harbor. It was later fished out by rescue teams and placed on display at a nearby museum, which asked members of the public what should be done with the statue.
This year, Germany acknowledged that during its occupation of what is now Namibia, it was responsible for colonial genocide. The government promised roughly $1.3 billion in aid for the country, adding that the sum would serve as a “gesture of recognition for immeasurable suffering.”
Haiti also pushed to be paid in compensation for the widespread suffering caused by slavery in the colonial era. Haitian officials said that France owed the country billions of dollars.
Naturally, there will be screeching from fuckwits about this, but it is a simple fact that the wealth of empire was gleaned from exploitation and slavery. We do not typically allow thieves to keep the proceeds of their thefts, and I see no reason we should allow it simply because they are a state and not an individual.
