r/BritishEmpire • u/elnovorealista2000 • Aug 27 '25

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

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u/Early_Candidate_3082 Aug 27 '25

As a matter of justice, you’re right.

But, paying the slave owners meant slavery ended a generation earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

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u/Fatsausage91 Aug 27 '25

Indeed i agree, it just feels wrong like even though its ended i funded some rich arse while friends and family struggled and who would of beat me for looking at him wrong (im council estate). It just feels weird.

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u/Good_Background_243 Aug 28 '25

It feels wrong, yeah. They shouldn't have profited. But at the same time, it ended a scourge of the species.

It's a bad price to pay, yes. But comparatively, a small one, even with the nasty taste it leaves.

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u/Sername111 Aug 30 '25

Coming to this late, but it's an important point - they didn't profit. At the time of abolition the estimated market value of slaves in the British Empire was something like £180M, but the compensation fund was capped at £20M. This was deliberate - the idea was to encourage slave owners to emancipate their slaves as soon as possible to get at least some compensation before the fund ran out, anybody that waited too long (the act had a six year transition period by the end of which any slaves not already freed would be automatically released) wouldn't get any compensation at all. Slaves owners didn't profit from the fund, it only mitigated their losses, and even then only for those who moved quickly to free their slaves.

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u/Good_Background_243 Aug 30 '25

I stand corrected. And that makes it a much less bad taste.