A lifetime of charity guilt

Well as far as I’m aware, the internal slave trade was not as brutal as the transatlantic system. In some instances temporary periods of slavery were used in place of prisons (which didn’t always exist). After the guilty party had served his punishment he would return home. Of course there were more sinister forms of slavery but when you think of the treatment of slaves in the transatlantic system it was far worse. You only have to look at the transportation of slaves across the Atlantic. Nothing in any internal slavery system compared to the barbarity and inhumanity of that. You also have to look at the number of people killed, around 20 million. I’m not aware of that number being killed by the internal system.

If you’re saying Britain shouldn’t be blamed for the slave trade that’s crazy considering Britain was a major player in the slave trade. It wasn’t the Africans who went to Europe and America offering slaves it was Europeans and Americans who went to Africa to look for slaves. The fact that centuries later some people developed a conscience doesn’t absolve Europe or America of responsibility. I’m also sure the slaves themselves were seeking abolition long before Abraham Lincoln or William Wilberforce appeared on the scene. Likewise Germany is responsible for what the nazis did and Russia is responsible for what happened in Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary etc. I’m not saying that the modern generations of those countries are responsible but their countries are.

Well if you look carefully, you’ll see that it was bassingbourne who brought the topic of slavery up. I was just commenting on what he said.