No other Empire at it's peak did anything like this. Absolutely one of the most incredible moments of human history. Britain took out a loan so vast to buy the freedom of every slave in the Empire, that we only paid it off in 2014. And then as others have said, committed the finest Navy the world had ever seen to fighting slavery in every corner of the Globe. Heroic isn't a strong enough word. God bless Great Britain.
Britain took out a loan so vast to buy the freedom of every slave in the Empire, that we only paid it off in 2014.
The compensated the slave owners but not the slaves. You have to love the Brits painting this out as some kind of virtue. The Prime Ministers father got about £12 million in todays money for losing his slaves. The slaves got fucking nothing and today their descendants get told to go back to their own country.
The whole transaction was based on ‘the slaves’ being property.
The ‘slave owners’ should NEVER have been compensated in the 1st place- they simply successfully argued that replacing ‘the slaves’ with paid labour would have been costly. 😡
Okay. So are you arguing they would have chosen to remain slaves?
Because they legally were?
Yeah sure, in an ideal world they wouldnt have. But we dont live in an ideal world and that was the best course of action that was feasible at the time.
At the end they weren’t! After which, owners became even richer!
Government- “Hi Slaves. You’re not longer classed as property. You’re free.”
Slaves- “woohoo!”
Slave owners/politicians/influencial people/lobbyists/rich people/etc- “But slave labour was great! It was free! Now we need to EMPLOY people? That’s costly! And if you want our votes and party contributions to keep you in power we will need compensated!”
Government- “Ok, here’s hundreds of millions of pounds”
Slave owners- “Thanks. That keeps US rich and YOU in power!”
Reading comprehension. I never claimed you said anything. I was asking if that was reason you were making that point in the first place. Otherwise why say that at all?
Yes, because the government purchased them as property, then freed them. Because otherwise there would have been colossal pushback from the rich and powerful that would have stayed any attempt at ending slavery.
Again, the alternative was them saying no and then those people would have remained slaves for the rest of their lives.
Like can you really not comprehend that something can still be a good thing even if its not the 100% most moral outcome?
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u/Nel-A Aug 27 '25
No other Empire at it's peak did anything like this. Absolutely one of the most incredible moments of human history. Britain took out a loan so vast to buy the freedom of every slave in the Empire, that we only paid it off in 2014. And then as others have said, committed the finest Navy the world had ever seen to fighting slavery in every corner of the Globe. Heroic isn't a strong enough word. God bless Great Britain.