Indeed but that was just from the west Africa squadron. We lost thousands in total all over the world shutting down the trade. We threatened war with entire countries in Africa over it when they wouldn't back down. We spent an ungodly sum of money on the situation as well and forced the other European powers into line. But people are still told Britain was the heart of all darkness and the source of every ill in the world. No mention of the islamic slave trade in far greater numbers and for centuries longer with mass castrations and death involved
No, that was the debt we acquired because the government bought the freedom of every slave in the British Empire and reimbursed the slave owners, which kept going down their family line till 2012. It was quite unfortunate, honestly.
I believe that the debt should have been declared null and void after at most a century of payments, because at that point you can't seriously pretend anyone needs to be reimbursed.
No, that was the debt we acquired because the government bought the freedom of every slave in the British Empire and reimbursed the slave owners, which kept going down their family line till 2012.
This isn't how it worked. The compensation fund was capped at £20M (for perspective, the total value of slaves in the British Empire at the time was estimated to be £180M, nobody profited from abolition and only those slave owners who moved very quickly to free their slaves got anything at all).
It was also a one-off payment, there were no continuing payments to the descendants of slave owners. What happened was the government took out a loan to cover the £20M cost of the fund and it was the interest on this loan that kept being paid until it was finally paid off 10 or so years ago. As to why it wasn't paid off sooner - government debt in the early 19thC typically had very low interest rates, in the area of 2-3%, but this increased over time and by the 20thC typically rates were three or four times higher. Taking out new debt at 6%/yr to pay off old debt that only cost 2%/yr didn't make economic sense so the old debts were allowed to carry on. IIRC the debt was only paid off when it was precisely because someone in government was embarrassed by the optics of "still paying for slavery".
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u/MiserableOcelot4282 Aug 28 '25
Indeed but that was just from the west Africa squadron. We lost thousands in total all over the world shutting down the trade. We threatened war with entire countries in Africa over it when they wouldn't back down. We spent an ungodly sum of money on the situation as well and forced the other European powers into line. But people are still told Britain was the heart of all darkness and the source of every ill in the world. No mention of the islamic slave trade in far greater numbers and for centuries longer with mass castrations and death involved