Garth Rattray

March 25, 1807, marks the 200th anniversary of the passing in the British Parliament of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. It made it illegal for British subjects to capture and transport slaves. In 1827 Britain declared that slave trading was piracy and punishable by death. The Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833, but it wasn't until 1834 that slavery was finally abolished in the British Empire with the emancipation of slaves.

Since the 8th century AD, Arab (Muslim) traders enslaved perhaps some 14-20 million Africans through the East African Arab slave trade. In contrast, Britain, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and North America benefited significantly from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. An estimated 10-17 million human beings were traded in this profitable, heinous, commercial venture.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was especially despicable because the slaves were inhumanely transported in the cramped, stinking, filthy bellies of slaving ships where nearly one-fifth of them died during the (Middle Passage) journey that lasted anywhere from five weeks to three months. Addition-ally, unlike other brands of slavery where the slaves were sometimes part of the household (as often depicted in the Old Testament) or where slaves could eventually earn their freedom (through extraordinary fealty, excellence of service, religious conversion, bequeathing in a will or magnanimity on the part of the slave-owner), African slaves transported to the New World were not considered as human beings. In fact, the legislation of the time relegated them to mere chattel (no better than livestock). Africans were enslaved because they were excellent workers, experienced in agriculture and animal husbandry, accustomed to the tropical climate and resistant to tropical diseases.

With the abolition of slavery, in 1834 the powerful West Indian planters lobbied for and won compensation of 20 million (according to William Green, British Slave Emancipation, and Parry and Sherlock in A Short History of the West Indies). However, noted Nigerian academician and historian, Professor J.F. Ade Ajayi, puts the figure at 23 million (about 23 billion in today's economy).

So-called freedom

The slaves ('chattel') got nothing for all their suffering and for all the wrongs visited upon them by a cruel and inhumane commercial system. Slaving nations built empires on the trade, farmers and industrialists made fortunes on the trade but the slaves that made it all possible received nothing but a very dubious, so-called freedom.

I suspect that the idea of reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade has been around since the abolition of that despicable practice. The fight for reparations has ebbed and flowed repeatedly. Recently, Denmark and the Virgin Islands made definite but minuscule steps towards some form of reparation (redress) for 'harm caused during slavery and colonisation under the Danish flag'. Both sides agreed that it was not about financial compensation or an apology. The Virgin Islands Daily News quoted Danish human rights expert Morten Kjaerum as saying, "This is a people-to-people initiative based on coming to terms with their history, contrary to other places where the primary focus has been on financial compensation."

Since February 6 this year, the Jamaican Parliament has been debating the reparation issue. Mike Henry, the Opposition MP for Central Clarendon, wants the Jamaican Parliament to demand reparations for people of African descent whose foreparents were forced into slavery in the Americas by European slave-trading nations. The bipartisan consensus is for us to demand financial redress but this course of action has several glaring omissions and (in my opinion) little chance of success.

Next week - who owes us what.