As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
African and Caribbean countries have called for a formal apology and reparations from countries that benefited from the transatlantic slave trade.
As black American academic Wilfred Reilly responded: All of them?
Because countries that benefitted from the transatlantic slave trade include many, many African and Caribbean countries. When it comes to slavery, more generally, almost the whole African continent was an enthusiastic whip-cracker. Africans enslaved one another for centuries. Few more assiduously and brutally than the Arab states of the Maghreb.
The demands come at the end of a three-day conference in Ghana, which looked to advance the push for reparatory justice.
Ghana, eh? That would be the same Ghana that was a pivot in the transatlantic slave trade. The Ghanaian coastline is still dotted with the forts and holding pens where local rulers gratefully received the steady flow of human chattel, before passing them on with a significant markup. Almost all of the slaves were bound for, not the United States, but the Caribbean.
African kingdoms and coastal rulers were the most enthusiastic participants in the trade. They captured, sold and profited from their fellow Africans on an industrial scale. The same goes for much of the Caribbean once the slaves arrived. So here is the obvious question these new reparations campaigners refuse to answer: will they be paying reparations to themselves?
It follows a landmark UN resolution in March which recognised transatlantic slavery as the “gravest crime against humanity”, urging UN member states to contribute to a reparations fund.
Why single out the transatlantic trade as uniquely evil? Surely slavery anywhere is a crime against humanity? If they want to talk about scale, then they need to address the camel in the tent. The Arab slave trade lasted longer, was often more brutal, and involved systematic castration of male slaves. African societies practised slavery long before Europeans arrived and continued long after.
The only thing special about the transatlantic version is that it was eventually ended by Western nations, chiefly Britain.
Britain spent a fortune – a debt only finally paid off in recent years – to force Africans to stop enslaving one another and Caribbean countries from treating African slaves as if they were as disposable as plastic cutlery. The Royal Navy patrolled the seas, at enormous cost to British taxpayers, intercepting slave ships and pressuring African and Arab rulers to stop.
Perhaps those same countries now demanding ‘reparations’ should be sending Britain a thank-you note and a cheque for the centuries of naval policing they benefitted from?
It won’t happen of course, because the real subtext of this latest push is so blatantly obvious: more gibsmedat from the West. Singling out only the Western chapter while giving a free pass to Arab, African and Ottoman slavers is not justice – it is a political shakedown aimed at the only civilisation rich enough and stupid enough to keep paying. A 19-point plan from the Ghana conference demands comprehensive debt relief, restitution of cultural property and a global reparations fund. No specific figure was named, of course. Why would it be, when the goal is an open-ended grift?
No country has ever paid reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans or affected African, Caribbean and Latin American nations.
That line is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It conveniently ignores that the countries now screaming loudest about historical wrongs never paid a cent to the descendants of the people they themselves enslaved and sold. The hypocrisy is industrial strength.
Most of the reparations paid in the 19th century went to slave owners as compensation for losing what was legally, like it or not, their property. Including by Britain. The idea that today’s Western institutions owe endless transfers to the descendants of people sold into slavery by their own ancestors is historical illiteracy dressed up as moral superiority.
France’s Emmanuel Macron turned up via video to tut-tut about the “dehumanised” slaves while warning that reparations should not be reduced to “a cheque written to bring the story to a close”. The UK and US ambassadors rightly rejected the whole racket, pointing out that no one can be held responsible for acts that were not illegal under the international law of their time. The UN General Assembly vote was as useful as pretty much any UN resolution: 123 grifters voted yes, but the serious players either voted no or abstained.
The conference wrapped with calls for “full, formal and unconditional apologies”. Well, you go first, lads.
Ghana’s president said history asks us to inherit responsibility, not guilt. Fair enough. Let the African and Caribbean nations that profited from selling their neighbours start by inheriting responsibility for their own role in the trade. Then we can talk.
Until then, the reparations mob can keep their hands out of Western pockets. The bill for ending slavery was already paid: in British blood and treasure.
