34 Saturday April 30 2022 | the timesComment
Abolition is estimated to have cost just under
2 per cent of national income. That was the
case each year for 60 years (from 1808 to
1867). Factoring in the principal costs and
the secondary costs, such as the higher
prices of goods the British had to pay
throughout this period, Britain’s abolition
and suppression of the Atlantic slave trade
may actually have equalled any financial
benefits accrued to the nation during the
period of the trade. Britain’s actions have
rightly been described by historians as “the
most expensive example” of international
moral action “recorded in modern history”.
The costs were not only financial. In the years
that the West Africa Squadron patrolled the seas,
they captured as many as 1,600 slave ships and
freed 150,000 African slaves. This led to significant
loss of British lives. During the decades after 1808,
more than 1,500 men of the Royal Navy were killed in
action fighting ships from countries such as Brazil,
whose trade in slaves continued until the 1880s. Do
these lives not count for anything? Does the heroism of
these seamen, chasing ships across the oceans,
boarding vessels and fighting for the lives of slaves
stowed away in the hold, count for nothing?
Apparently so. Activists are so desperate to pretend
the Royal Navy did no such thing that they have even
attempted to smear Britain’s greatest naval hero,
Admiral Lord Nelson, by claiming he was a supporter
of the trade. In 2020 activists called for Nelson’s
Column in Trafalgar Square to be removed. Searching
for evidence after they had already reached their
conclusion, they cited the existence of a “letter”
showing Nelson’s ardent support for the trade. What
they did not realise (it was proved to much less fanfareT
his week it was the turn of the Wessexes,
poor things. Edward and Sophie, the Earl
and Countess of Wessex, arrived in St Lucia
to a reception that was initially warm. But
very soon they were met by protesters. The
signs included one saying: “We want reparations now.
The Queen of England needs to apologise for slavery.”
Another said “Queen say sorry” while drums and
chanting went on. There was a similar scene in St
Vincent and the Grenadines, where protesters held
signs saying “compensation now” and “Britain your
debt is outstanding”.
The Wessexes are just the latest royals to step into
this particular mess. Last month it was the
Cambridges. During their tour of the Caribbean
Prince William and his wife, Kate, faced calls for the
monarchy itself to pay reparations for the slave trade.
So great was the pressure felt to be that William
concluded the tour by giving a speech at a dinner in
Jamaica where he expressed his “profound sorrow” for
the slave trade, saying it “should never have
happened” and that it “for ever stains our history”.
Nothing could be more absurd. It is simply a shame
that the royal family should have become enmeshed in
one of the great shakedown attempts of our time.
It is hardly surprising that officials and others in the
Caribbean, as in parts of Africa, find the issue of
reparations such a perennial interest. They know it to
be one of the most cost-free exercises they can indulge
in. In the best-case scenario their guests might actually
pay up. The worst-case scenario is they just put every
visitor from any western country on the back foot and
pretend that any continuing problems in the country
are not to do with misgovernance or corruption but to
a trade that ceased more than 200 years ago.
They rely, of course, on western ignorance, which is
indeed magnificent. In America as in Britain and the
rest of the West, there was a time when the history of
empire and slavery may have been taught only in one
light. But those days are generations past. Today,
slavery is taught as though the transatlantic slave
trade was the only slave trade that existed. The far
larger trading of Africans east to the Arabs during the
same period is utterly unknown. Where are their
descendants? They didn’t have any. Because the Arabs
who transported perhaps as many as 18 million
Africans to their lands castrated all the males to
ensure there were no more black Africans. I would be
surprised if one in a million schoolchildren knows
anything about this. For there is very little scholarship
on the subject outside the French-speaking world.
Also ignored is the trade in white Europeans which
happened in the same period. In that process the
Barbary pirates and others stole Europeans from theReparations
for slavery are
just a cynical
shakedown
coastal towns of England and European countries and
sold them into slavery. More than a million Europeans
were stolen in this way.
Like everything else that benefits the anti-western
narrative of our day, slavery is presented as though it
was a vice indulged in only by white westerners.
Whereas it was of course a wickedness engaged in by
every civilisation in history. And, as Voltaire said,
perhaps the only thing worse than what the Europeans
did in buying Africans and sending them across the
oceans was what the Africans did to their fellow
Africans in stealing them and selling them, not just to
the Europeans, Americans and Arabs but to other
Africans. The few memoirs of slaves that have
come down to us, such as those of the remarkable
Olaudah Equiano, bear testament to this. The
people who did the people-stealing were African.
None of this is what-a-boutery. Neither
does it diminish the horror of the European
and transatlantic slave trade. But it is
context which is necessary, given that the
re-eruption of a debate about reparations is
so completely context-free.
Those who call for apologies seem to
think that no apologies have been
forthcoming before. Never mind demanding
action from the Cambridges or Wessexes,
this country’s laws putting an end to the
slave trade were signed by King George III.
Those who pretend that the Crown has never
apologised for the slave trade or are overdue
for an apology must simply be ignorant or
mendacious. They cannot know, for instance,
that Prince Albert spoke at a meeting in London
dedicated to the extinction of the slave trade in- During his remarks, the consort to Queen
Victoria not only apologised for the slave trade but
described it as having been “the blackest stain upon
civilised Europe”. Why was Albert still speaking about
the slave trade in 1840? Because although Britain had
by then long abolished slavery, other countries in the
world had not. What made Britain remarkable was not
just that we were the first to stop taking part in the
wicked trade ourselves, but that having stopped doing
so we then went on to do everything we could to end
it in the rest of the world as well.
After abolishing the trade in 1807, this country chose
to send the Royal Navy around the world, establishing
the West Africa Squadron based at Freetown, and grew
the fleet until a sixth of the ships and seamen of the
Royal Navy were employed in the fight against the
slave trade. The cost to Britain of this highly unusual
decision was significant. Scholars who have done the
maths have produced some sobering conclusions.
weekend essay
As the royals face more demonstrations and demands for
apologies, Douglas Murray argues that every civilisation
in history has engaged in this wicked trade and Britain
should feel proud of the role it played in stamping it out
The Duchess of Cambridge
shaking hands with
children during a visit to
Trench Town in Jamaica
last month. Top right, a
protest in St Lucia during
the royal tour by the
Wessexes this week.
Above, Prince Albert
apologised for slavery in
1840 and spoke out
against it, more than 30
years after Britain
abolished the tradeAb
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