jamellebouie.net profile picture

jamelle @jamellebouie.net

reminded of eric williams's observation about britain's relationship to its history with slavery. "British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it."

joannehammond.bsky.social profile picture

Joanne Hammond @joannehammond.bsky.social

holy shit: “Among the 2,000 UK adults surveyed, 85% were unaware that Britain forcibly transported more than 3 million Africans to the Caribbean, 89% did not know that Britain enslaved people in the Caribbean for more than 300 years” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

CRC mission will seek to deepen public understanding of Britain’s colonial legacy and its lasting impact

Caribbean reparations leaders in ‘historic’ first UK visit to press for justice

CRC mission will seek to deepen public understanding of Britain’s colonial legacy and its lasting impact

Replies

  3. shrimpleton.bsky.social profile picture

    Shrimp @shrimpleton.bsky.social

    tbh it's not just Britain—I was hitting walls trying to find more sources on slavery and abolitionism in Spain outside of wikipedia, and everything seemed to focus on their colonies and not the core government itself??

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  6. lines.snail.skin profile picture

    ᴅʀ. ʟɪɴᴇꜱ @lines.snail.skin

    I think what I find particularly galling about this is that I remember learning about this at school in the UK! I don't know if I just had a particularly good teacher that year or what but it feels like people are wilfully ignorant.

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  18. wiredog.bsky.social profile picture

    wiredog @wiredog.bsky.social

    I grew up in Virginia and hardly heard about it. Learned about the War For Southern Independence though.

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  19. wotsnottolike.bsky.social profile picture

    @wotsnottolike.bsky.social

    The 'triangle of trade' took guns and cloth to W. Africa, picked up slaves and sold them in the Carribean, and returned with sugar, rum and tobacco. We were taught that in school in the 1960s.

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  20. dougstern.bsky.social profile picture

    Doug @dougstern.bsky.social

    A black American woman getting interviewed on the streets of London told the story that black Brits always ask her where she's from and she said 'Virginia' and they black Brits always wanna know where her people are from - like Jamaica or Bermuda. As if black Jamaicans aren't also from elsewhere

    1
  22. aimaiami.bsky.social profile picture

    Aimai @aimaiami.bsky.social

    Yes I’ve noticed this too in talking to English people and reading how they respond to American racism. They are totally of the mindset that slavery had nothing to do with them at all and there are no lingering racist effects of slavery, imperialism, or colonialism.

    2
  23. inclinedplane.bsky.social profile picture

    InclinedPlane🏳️‍🌈 @inclinedplane.bsky.social

    The Brits always seem to conveniently forget that they ran systems which were either best described as slavery or one step removed, such as the zamindari feudal system in colonial India, which operated up through the mid-20th century.

    2
  24. kmthurman.bsky.social profile picture

    Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social

    Lived in UK for 5 years it’s shocking to me that on every show like Question Time how they seem to be ignorant their empire is gone and what it was.

    Similar to slavery, they talk Palestine as if they still have real influence but no responsibility.

    Or Windrush, a modern scandal not an old one.

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  29. aunticles.bsky.social profile picture

    Aunticlaus 🤶 @aunticles.bsky.social

    Certainly our history of slavery was never mentioned when I was a kid. Black British historians like David Olusoga have done a lot to address the ignorance but I don't know if it's now properly taught in schools

    1
  30. 3fecta.bsky.social profile picture

    Dag. @3fecta.bsky.social

    The British museum stole so many things, but apparently history of colonialism books weren't amongst them.

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  31. jontybeeswax.bsky.social profile picture

    Jon Beeson @jontybeeswax.bsky.social

    This is all true, although I really don't think that many white Americans or other white western Europeans are in that great a position to criticise. Sure, we were the worst. But the only people involved in the slave trade? Not even close.

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  32. @canuckistanidxb.bsky.social

    They need to listen to Behind the Bastards latest.

    About Thomas Thistlewood a plantation owner in Jamaica from Britain who kept a diary. One of the few.

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  33. ednyealaskaguy.bsky.social profile picture

    Ed Nye Alaskan Guy @ednyealaskaguy.bsky.social

    I bet even fewer of them know that only in very recent times did the British government get done paying reparations to British slaveholders.

    They paid these because they ended slavery.

    1
  35. kapowaz.net profile picture

    Ben Darlow @kapowaz.net

    I just finished watching David Olusoga’s excellent documentary series ‘Empire’ tonight. It’s a crime how little of this stuff I knew about, and I always thought I was relatively clued up. I imagine the average Brit knows even less.

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  39. schamp120.bsky.social profile picture

    Sean Champ @schamp120.bsky.social

    Maybe there's a chance to share the news? somewhat recently, the manufacture of a controversy after candor about the history of slavery in Britain at the National Trust www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/03/12/n...

    Content from the National Trust's own Web site www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/r...

    Research commissioned by the trust provoked complaints from Conservative politicians amid UK culture war around controversial monuments

    National Trust's report on colonial and slavery history did not breach charity law, regulator says

    Research commissioned by the trust provoked complaints from Conservative politicians amid UK culture war around controversial monuments
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  41. philk10.bsky.social profile picture

    @philk10.bsky.social

    and when someone does a program for the BBC to educate people on it - 'Empire With David Olusoga' - it gets slammed as "boring woke nonsense that we thought we'd stopped doing years ago"

    1
  43. asteriathehag.bsky.social profile picture

    Asteria @asteriathehag.bsky.social

    It's always been very bizarre to me how (online at least) people talk about American slavery as though it wasn't invented by Europeans. They talk about the respective abolitions of US and British slavery as though England couldn't have abolished US slavery back when they, yknow, owned it.

    1
  45. kraigpeck.bsky.social profile picture

    Kraig Peck @kraigpeck.bsky.social

    African slaves grew sugar in the Caribbean and made European (incl English) landowners wealthy. In colonial (British) America, African slaves grew cotton, tobacco, and rice. And in colonial (British) India, Indian slaves were household, agricultural, or sex slaves ("concubines").

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  48. moh-kohn.bsky.social profile picture

    Alistair Davidson @moh-kohn.bsky.social

    The National Trust, which owns many historical buildings, has in the last decade or so been adding information about slavery to displays. The response has been a furious culture war and an organised attempt by tens of thousands of people to vote out its board. They seem to have been seen off for now

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  50. andyspags.bsky.social profile picture

    @andyspags.bsky.social

    It’s a fair critique. Reading it as an American it’s also a lot like looking in a mirror.

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  51. peej.hahabean.maison profile picture

    P.J. [peej] Tikalsky @peej.hahabean.maison

    Reading Austen’s Mansfield Park rn and I think it’s a really interesting perspective from the side of the British gentry and how largely oblivious/unbothered they were to what made them so rich (but also, if you made your money off the West Indian plantations, you were seen as New Money/lesser than)

    3
  52. lhuggs.bsky.social profile picture

    @lhuggs.bsky.social

    Have that conversation with a Frenchman. The Irish probably similar. None of us are ever taught the ugliest part of our histories. But people everywhere took slaves from wherever they could get them. Same race, different race... EVERYONE DID IT!!! We should really look at how THAT shaped us.

    1
  53. marcusdaniel62.bsky.social profile picture

    @marcusdaniel62.bsky.social

    That's quite true. Training as a historian in the UK I learned nothing about slavery in school or university. But there's a wrinkle. Williams - a great historian - so discredited British anti-slavery on the left (pious, capitalist and hypocritical) that the history of anti-slavery was also dumped.

    2
  60. edenarachnelatro.bsky.social profile picture

    Eden @edenarachnelatro.bsky.social

    There are still families in Britain who are living off the wealth slavery kickstarted for them. Not least of these is the so called “British Royal Family”.

    #NoKings

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  63. dyl057.bsky.social profile picture

    Dylan @dyl057.bsky.social

    Every Briton gets credit for Wilberforce, whom they all would have agreed with from the very start.

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  65. bullix.bsky.social profile picture

    Bullix @bullix.bsky.social

    But they’re happy to lay it all at our feet. Same with the rest of Europe. Staring directly at you, The Netherlands

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  66. themilesturner.bsky.social profile picture

    Miles @themilesturner.bsky.social

    As I've said elsewhere, on the rare occasions transatlantic slavery came up in history when I was at school, it always came with the heavy implication that it was exclusively an American thing.

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  69. sean73.bsky.social profile picture

    Sean Kenny @sean73.bsky.social

    An awful large proportion of British people know that we were involved in the slave trade for a long time, ie those figures look whack. Maybe it’s a multiple choice question designed to elicit ignorance over the exact nos. No link to the poll which is always a red flag.

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  73. mod1968.bsky.social profile picture

    @mod1968.bsky.social

    Did they also not know that the US began as a British colony… that had slavery?

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  74. hpr69.bsky.social profile picture

    HPR @hpr69.bsky.social

    I will forever complain about how the US teaches about the evils of its past, but I will give them one thing.

    At least they tell us it happened

    3
  75. fairydogma.bsky.social profile picture

    Lissie @fairydogma.bsky.social

    WUT? And I thought this country had its head up its ass, historically speaking.

    I feel like kiings everywhere should be a no no. 🙃

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  80. outtaflushing.bsky.social profile picture

    @outtaflushing.bsky.social

    I remember thinking, why didn't the US follow Britain's example and abolish slavery in 1834? Only recently did I think - we did follow Britain's example! We were British! Our slavery was British colonial slavery. Woven ab initio into the country. And so embedded, only a war could undo it.

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  81. poppastring.com profile picture

    Mark Downie @poppastring.com

    This was how English History was to taught to me in UK schools in the 80s/90s:

    • Romans
    • Anglo-Saxons & Vikings
    • Normans & Medieval feudalism
    • Tudors & Stuarts
    • Georgians (Industrial Rev, nothing else 👀)
    • Victorians (abolition 🤔)
    • World War 1 & 2

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  83. whiskers13.bsky.social profile picture

    @whiskers13.bsky.social

    I see that white Euros enslaved millions. That is obviously reprehensible. The thing I can’t wrap my head around is how can we put a number on compensation for these sins.

    We need remedies starting with ensuring equal rights and opportunity. But how do we address a monetary compensation?

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  84. ktrainfromphilly.bsky.social profile picture

    Kristin K-Train Aliberto @ktrainfromphilly.bsky.social

    There was a NYT oped in the 2010s about how the British winning the American revolution would have ended slavery earlier. This was based on the earlier dates of the legal end of both the slave trade and slavery.

    This ignores the revolution being a core factor in the moral and economic pushes...

    1
  86. trevorlayhey.bsky.social profile picture

    Trevor Layhey @trevorlayhey.bsky.social

    Humans have been enslaving each other from day one. EVERYWHERE and EVERYTIME. Each new generation destroys then rewrites history in its favor. Then proceeds to do it all over again. New ways are invented but NOTHING about it is ever NEW or exclusive.

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  87. pauljunhyuk.bsky.social profile picture

    Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social

    I think discussing the Atlantic slave trade and Britain’s massive role in it (I think Brazil eventually enslaved more people but it was close) has only recently been added to the school curriculum so most adults don’t know the facts.

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