USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: UK families enjoy proceeds of slavery

'The database is available from Wednesday at: ucl.ac.uk/lbs.'

Manning



Professor Akurang- Parry, thank you for this posting.



Eric Williams, Walter Rodney, Joseph Inikori and others have said all along
that British capitalism was built on slavery and that the British banking system, its industrial revolution and

its overall economy are largely the products of blood, sweat and iron shackles.



These new documents and discussions are most welcome.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali



________________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Akurang-Parry, Kwabena [KAParr@ship.edu]
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 1:53 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; kwabena obrimpono
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - FW: UK families enjoy proceeds of slavery

Hmm! Compensation paid to British slave owners!

Kwabena

From: H-NET List for the History of Slavery [H-SLAVERY@H-NET.MSU.EDU] on behalf of Steven Mintz [steven.mintz@OUTLOOK.COM]
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 10:44 AM
To: H-SLAVERY@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: UK families enjoy proceeds of slavery

From: joanna.tegnerowicz@wns.uni.wroc.pl
This interesting article, which mentions a new database, appears in
today's "Independent".

Joanna Tegnerowicz, University of Wroclaw (Poland)


Britain's colonial shame: Slave-owners given huge payouts after abolition

David Cameron's ancestors were among the wealthy families who received
generous reparation payments that would be worth millions of pounds in
today's money

SANCHEZ MANNING SUNDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2013,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-colonial-shame-slaveowners-given-huge-payouts-after-abolition-8508358.html

The true scale of Britain's involvement in the slave trade has been
laid bare in documents revealing how the country's wealthiest families
received the modern equivalent of billions of pounds in compensation
after slavery was abolished.

The previously unseen records show exactly who received what in
payouts from the Government when slave ownership was abolished by
Britain – much to the potential embarrassment of their descendants. Dr
Nick Draper from University College London, who has studied the
compensation papers, says as many as one-fifth of wealthy Victorian
Britons derived all or part of their fortunes from the slave economy.

As a result, there are now wealthy families all around the UK still
indirectly enjoying the proceeds of slavery where it has been passed
on to them. Dr Draper said: "There was a feeding frenzy around the
compensation." A John Austin, for instance, owned 415 slaves, and got
compensation of £20,511, a sum worth nearly £17m today. And
there were
many who received far more.

Academics from UCL, led by Dr Draper, spent three years drawing
together 46,000 records of compensation given to British slave-owners
into an internet database to be launched for public use on Wednesday.
But he emphasised that the claims set to be unveiled were not just
from rich families but included many "very ordinary men and women" and
covered the entire spectrum of society.

Dr Draper added that the database's findings may have implications for
the "reparations debate". Barbados is currently leading the way in
calling for reparations from former colonial powers for the injustices
suffered by slaves and their families.

Among those revealed to have benefited from slavery are ancestors of
the Prime Minister, David Cameron, former minister Douglas Hogg,
authors Graham Greene and George Orwell, poet Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, and the new chairman of the Arts Council, Peter Bazalgette.
Other prominent names which feature in the records include scions of
one of the nation's oldest banking families, the Barings, and the
second Earl of Harewood, Henry Lascelles, an ancestor of the Queen's
cousin. Some families used the money to invest in the railways and
other aspects of the industrial revolution; others bought or
maintained their country houses, and some used the money for
philanthropy. George Orwell's great-grandfather, Charles Blair,
received £4,442, equal to £3m today, for the 218 slaves he owned.

The British government paid out £20m to compensate some 3,000 families
that owned slaves for the loss of their "property" when
slave-ownership was abolished in Britain's colonies in 1833. This
figure represented a staggering 40 per cent of the Treasury's annual
spending budget and, in today's terms, calculated as wage values,
equates to around £16.5bn.

A total of £10m went to slave-owning families in the Caribbean and
Africa, while the other half went to absentee owners living in
Britain. The biggest single payout went to James Blair (no relation to
Orwell), an MP who had homes in Marylebone, central London, and
Scotland. He was awarded £83,530, the equivalent of £65m today, for
1,598 slaves he owned on the plantation he had inherited in British
Guyana.

But this amount was dwarfed by the amount paid to John Gladstone, the
father of 19th-century prime minister William Gladstone. He received
£106,769 (modern equivalent £83m) for the 2,508 slaves he owned
across
nine plantations. His son, who served as prime minister four times
during his 60-year career, was heavily involved in his father's claim.

Mr Cameron, too, is revealed to have slave owners in his family
background on his father's side. The compensation records show that
General Sir James Duff, an army officer and MP for Banffshire in
Scotland during the late 1700s, was Mr Cameron's first cousin six
times removed. Sir James, who was the son of one of Mr Cameron's
great-grand-uncle's, the second Earl of Fife, was awarded £4,101,
equal to more than £3m today, to compensate him for the 202 slaves he
forfeited on the Grange Sugar Estate in Jamaica.

Another illustrious political family that it appears still carries the
name of a major slave owner is the Hogg dynasty, which includes the
former cabinet minister Douglas Hogg. They are the descendants of
Charles McGarel, a merchant who made a fortune from slave ownership.
Between 1835 and 1837 he received £129,464, about £101m in today's
terms, for the 2,489 slaves he owned. McGarel later went on to bring
his younger brother-in-law Quintin Hogg into his hugely successful
sugar firm, which still used indentured labour on plantations in
British Guyana established under slavery. And it was Quintin's
descendants that continued to keep the family name in the limelight,
with both his son, Douglas McGarel Hogg, and his grandson, Quintin
McGarel Hogg, becoming Lord Chancellor.

Dr Draper said: "Seeing the names of the slave-owners repeated in
20th‑century family naming practices is a very stark reminder about
where those families saw their origins being from. In this case I'm
thinking about the Hogg family. To have two Lord Chancellors in
Britain in the 20th century bearing the name of a slave-owner from
British Guyana, who went penniless to British Guyana, came back a very
wealthy man and contributed to the formation of this political
dynasty, which incorporated his name into their children in
recognition – it seems to me to be an illuminating story and a potent
example."

Mr Hogg refused to comment yesterday, saying he "didn't know anything
about it". Mr Cameron declined to comment after a request was made to
the No 10 press office.

Another demonstration of the extent to which slavery links stretch
into modern Britain is Evelyn Bazalgette, the uncle of one of the
giants of Victorian engineering, Sir Joseph Bazalgette and ancestor of
Arts Council boss Sir Peter Bazalgette. He was paid £7,352
(£5.7m in
today's money) for 420 slaves from two estates in Jamaica. Sir Peter
said yesterday: "It had always been rumoured that his father had some
interests in the Caribbean and I suspect Evelyn inherited that. So I
heard rumours but this confirms it, and guess it's the sort of thing
wealthy people on the make did in the 1800s. He could have put his
money elsewhere but regrettably he put it in the Caribbean."

The TV chef Ainsley Harriott, who had slave-owners in his family on
his grandfather's side, said yesterday he was shocked by the amount
paid out by the government to the slave-owners. "You would think the
government would have given at least some money to the freed slaves
who need to find homes and start new lives," he said. "It seems a bit
barbaric. It's like the rich protecting the rich."

The database is available from Wednesday at: ucl.ac.uk/lbs.

Cruel trade

Slavery on an industrial scale was a major source of the wealth of the
British empire, being the exploitation upon which the West Indies
sugar trade and cotton crop in North America was based. Those who made
money from it were not only the slave-owners, but also the investors
in those who transported Africans to enslavement. In the century to
1810, British ships carried about three million to a life of forced
labour.

Campaigning against slavery began in the late 18th century as
revulsion against the trade spread. This led, first, to the abolition
of the trade in slaves, which came into law in 1808, and then, some 26
years later, to the Act of Parliament that would emancipate slaves.
This legislation made provision for the staggering levels of
compensation for slave-owners, but gave the former slaves not a penny
in reparation.

More than that, it said that only children under six would be
immediately free; the rest being regarded as "apprentices" who would,
in exchange for free board and lodging, have to work for their
"owners" 40 and a half hours for nothing until 1840. Several large
disturbances meant that the deadline was brought forward and so, in
1838, 700,000 slaves in the West Indies, 40,000 in South Africa and
20,000 in Mauritius were finally liberated.

David Randall

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