Large-scale slavery has been a dead letter in most parts of the world since the Slave Trade Act of 1807 made the transportation of slaves illegal within the British empire and on the high seas where the Royal Navy patrolled. Legal abolition of slavery followed in 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act. Chattel slavery in the United States was ended by the American Civil War. The last major power to allow slavery was the Ottoman Empire, which was dissolved after the First World War. Slavery still exists … mostly in the Islamic world and in the criminal underworld elsewhere, but is no longer an almost universal condition. (Despite ridiculous recent claims, slavery was not “invented” in 1619: pretty much every civilization we know of had forms of slavery from before the earliest cities were built.)
Despite nearly 200 years since the suppression of the slave trade and the abolishment of the institution, many countries are now presenting claims for reparations to Britain for the history of slavery. And feeble-minded politicians are treating these claims as though they are somehow morally correct despite all the evidence of history. On his Substack, Spaceman Spiff demands that we treat these grifters firmly and refuse any such future claims:
I came across a video that explains how absurd modern views on European colonization are. Accusations of racism aimed at our ancestors are meaningless since everyone was racist. Only one group attempted to be non-racist. Transcript below.
The Maori were racist towards other Pacific Asian tribes. I mean, everyone is a racist if by that term we mean the assumptions by GROUP A that members of GROUP B are inferior and deserve to be conquered if they can be.
That is a universal human phenomenon and it arises from evolutionary needs for basically in-group solidarity. So racism is the standard default position for all peoples.
To say that the Europeans were racist is just to state the obvious because all peoples were racist.
If it is not a statement of the obvious then it’s patently false. And by that I mean that if I were to judge the racism of the Europeans vis-a-vis the places they conquered, compared to the racism of other groups at the time, we find the Europeans much less racist. And if we were going to put it on a spectrum the only anti-racists in the whole world at the time of European colonialism were the Europeans. Because they were the ones who went abroad and said, these peoples have the capacity to be just like us. These people deserve freedoms. These people deserve to be freed from slavery. They deserve to be developed. They deserve to be civilized, which of course is seen as a sort of great racist act but it is quite the opposite.
It is the act of saying all peoples have the potential to be self-governing, to be flourishing, to have a written language, history, arts and culture. This was the great anti-racist campaign that European colonialism represented. So that’s why I say it is simply a statement of the obvious or it is patently false.
The video calmly debunks the notion European colonization was driven by racism. Quite the opposite. It was an early form of anti-racism on a global scale based on a belief everyone deserved a high standard of living like Europeans.
This quirk of Western man has encouraged calls to pay reparations for the slave trade thanks to our continuing concern with the welfare of out-groups, a preoccupation unique to Europeans and shunned by the rest of the world even today.
Pay us in cash, guilty Westerner
It has become fashionable to suggest Britain and America pay reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. This is partly because of Britain’s involvement in European colonization of Africa, and partly the presence of slaves in the USA and some British colonies in the Caribbean.
The facts surrounding the abolition of slavery are well documented. They represent one of the most astonishing acts of decency in history, all the more amazing as one of those countries was the unchallenged global superpower of its day. There was no one else strong enough to make them do it; it was entirely voluntary.
Manacles being removed by Able Seaman Joseph Chidwick in 1907 from an enslaved man who had worn the leg irons for three years. HMS Sphinx operated off the coast of Oman in the Arabian sea and attracted a number of slaves from a nearby slave-trading village whom the British immediately freed.
Britain’s actions were quickly followed by France and then the USA which led to the abolition of slavery throughout most of the world.
And yet reparations have become a rallying call among some. Everyone from the United Nations to individual countries like Jamaica and Ghana are baying for blood.
Underlying the drive is the additional charge of racism, a very modern idea.
