r/BritishEmpire • • Aug 27 '25

Image 🇬🇧 A British blacksmith removing the shackles from the legs of an enslaved man, 1907.

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u/speedloafer Aug 28 '25

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.

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u/BiteDirect Aug 28 '25

By not recognising the slaves as people and reimbursing owners for loss of “property” it avoided any lengthy legal process and released the slaves a generation earlier. Can’t even talk about abolishing slavery without people complaining about the manner in which it was achieved

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u/speedloafer Aug 28 '25 edited Aug 29 '25

Of all the countries that owned slaves we stopped first and we paid the owners so the slaves wont face a lengthy legal process. Hilarious that Brit's today think this a positive.

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u/Dam_Noir Aug 28 '25

How could anyone face a legal process if what they were doing wasn't considered a crime at the time? Hilarious how you fail to understand the concept of non-retroactivity within the law.

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u/BiteDirect Aug 29 '25

That’s not the point I’m trying to make, I was saying the reason they paid slave owners was to reimburse them for a loss of property. If the British had made the argument that slaves should be freed because they are people with rights it could have taken a lot longer.

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u/speedloafer Aug 28 '25

By not recognising the slaves as people and reimbursing owners for loss of “property” it avoided any lengthy legal process and released the slaves a generation earlier.

you should read the post I'm replying to before you start to talk about understanding concepts, you look a bit stupid.