1/6 🧵I’ve given a few talks recently about trans-Atlantic slavery in British history, to people who really don’t want to hear it. I don’t mean haranguing shoppers in Oxford Street, but talks to church, community and business groups comprised of small ‘c’ conservative White people who’ve been willing to hear me out, even if they find it uncomfortable.
I’ve kept it factual and based it on two main databases: https://t.co/dvxBzLNT6U on British participation in the trans-Atlantic slave ‘trade’ and https://t.co/ShYr4TXB7W on slave ownership.
On every occasion, there have been two main objections. In case its useful for others, this thread sets out what they are, along with my own attempts to answer:
1. What about other slave systems – notably the Muslims/Arabs/Barbary Corsairs. Weren’t they just as ‘bad’?
a) The Arab slave trading system along the east African coast, across the Red Sea and the Sahara Desert took some 4-10 million people into captivity over a 1000 year period. The trans-Atlantic system was far more intense, taking over 12.5 million captives across the Atlantic in a 350 year period.
b) Islamic systems of slavery largely disregarded ethnicity or race. Captives were taken from sub-Saharan and North Africa and from Barbary raids across the Mediterranean into Western Europe. In the trans-Atlantic system, captivity was exclusive to Black African people, with enduring implications for European ideas of racial difference, developed to ‘explain’ and justify the system.
