Home
Britain's Slavery Debt: Reparations Now!
Loading Inventory...
Barnes and Noble
Britain's Slavery Debt: Reparations Now!
Current price: $18.99
Barnes and Noble
Britain's Slavery Debt: Reparations Now!
Current price: $18.99
Loading Inventory...
Size: Hardcover
*Product Information may vary - to confirm product availability, pricing, and additional information please contact Barnes and Noble
Britain owes reparations to the Caribbean. The exploitation of generations of those trafficked from Africa, or born into enslavement, to work the immensely profitable sugars plantations, enriched both British individuals and the British nation. Colonialism, even after emancipation, perpetuated the exploitation. The Caribbean still suffers, and Britain still benefits, from these historic wrongs.
There are some fairly standard objections to reparations 'slavery ended a long time ago'; 'Britain should be celebrating its role in abolishing slavery'; 'slavery was legal back then and we shouldn't judge the past by the standards of the present'; 'you shouldn't visit the sins of the fathers on the sons'; and so on. And there is a sense that the practical problems of who should pay what to whom are immensely difficult.
Michael Banner carefully considers and answers these objections. He argues that reparations are not about punishment, but about the restoration of wrongful gains. In
he makes a specific and practical proposal regarding reparations, picking up on the programme suggested by Caribbean countries (through CARICOM), and taking as a starting point the nearly £20 million paid as compensation by the British government at abolition, not to those who had suffered slavery, but to those who lost enslaved labourers.
discusses what can be done, here and now, by individuals and institutions, to advance the case for reparations between national governments.