Europe Faces Pressure To Pay Slavery Reparations

Interested to see which African countries you think should pay.

 

Sarah, when it comes to WW, I never joke.

 

Euro currency or Euro women ?

 

Both.
The currency is slippin, but still better than the dollar.

 

A drop in value of currency helps industry, exports, tourism. Except travel outside Euro zone.

 

But we European women are not slipping in value, LOL

 

Yeah, it just pisses me off how the Euro is dropping JUST as I'm leaving Europe!! Living here has been really hard because for the last year the pound and the Euro have pretty much had the same value but just as I leave, the pound gets stronger again. Rubbish.

 

Where are you going to Russia?

 

Well I've been in Barcelona for the last four months as you know, and the cost of life here was killing me. I'm going to go back to England for a month, then to the Ukraine in July for three months. I will be going to France for a long weekend with my boyfriend in June though so I'll make the most of the strong sterling! Haha.

 

Nice. Where in France?

 

Saint Malo. I've never been there before, it looks really nice.

 

Nice town on the sea. Walled fortress town where the corsaires were based. You shouls also visit Mont St Michel, whis is close by.

 

I hope not.

 

The money would come from the current European banks, corporations, royal families and governments who were historically involved in the slave trade. Can't answer the other questions right now.

 

Slavery and London

"The fortune of many an old respectable family came from it. Slavery is as the heart of the wealth of London." - Geraint Smith

"A feature of the shipping engaged in West Indian privateering which may cause some surprise is the overwhelming predominance of Londoners. There are forty-one ships mentioned herein whose port of origin has been traced; thirty-one were from London." - Kenneth Andrews

According to One Foot in the Past, a programme shown on BBC TV in 1993, involvement in the slave trade was seen as a respectable occupation in London during the 17th and 18th centuries. Although Bristol and Liverpool were the main docking areas for slaves coming into England, it was in London that businessmen who made millions from the financing of the slave trade. By 1750, it was these London merchants which were taking almost three-quarters of the sugar imported from the West Indies, and many of them lived in South London, in a area thought today as Blackheath.

Thus, many famous institutions in London were built on the profits of the slave trade, according to research carried out by Dr. Nick Merriman of the Museum of London. (1) These included Barclays Bank, founded by Alexander and David Barclay, who were among 84 Quaker slave traders operating in the West Indies according to the records of the Society of Friends. (1) One bank closely connected with slavery and South East London was Barings Bank. It's founder, Sir Francis Baring earned nearly 7 million British pounds from a business of dealing in slaves that went back 70 years. Baring Road in South East London is named after him. He was said to have his first money trading in slaves when he was just 16, indicating his family's immense wealth and business connections with the West Indies. Thus, it is an outrage that this road (in the London Borough of Lewisham), has not been renamed.

The founding collection of pictures at the National Gallery in London, was given by John Julius Angerstein. He had built up his art collection with the money made from the slave trade, and his activities as one of Lloyd's underwriters insuring the slavers. According to one historian, the Bank of England should well have been called the Bank of the West Indies, because of it's involvement in slavery. Humphrey Morice, the Bank's governor between 1716 and 1729, owned six slave ships. Sir Richard Neave, a director for 48 years, was chairman of the Society of West Indian Merchants. Slaves were sold on the London Royal Exchange and "other places of public resort" - many of them children.

Charles II was a shareholder in the Royal African Company

The Royal African Company made vast profits from the slave trade. Of the 70,000 slaves the company shipped to the Caribbean between 1680 and 1688, only 46,000 survived the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. On these voyages of death, many Africans died of epidemics of disease or malnutrition - many simply committed suicide by either refusing food, hanging themselves by their chains, or throwing themselves overboard into a sea bristling with sharks fins.

 

The British royal family and slavery

The book by Hugh Thomas, "The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870," has information on the British royal families involvement in the slave trade. in 1632, King Charles I first granted a licence to transport slaves from Guinea. In 1651, a new Guinea Company in London was founded, in which a prominent London merchant and slave trader Samuel Vassall was one of the major shareholders. Vassall was one of the early 'incorporators' of Massachusetts. He also collaborated with Lord Berkeley to develop Virginia. Vassall had had endless debts and lawsuits, and several terms of imprisonment. An MP, for the City of London, he was also a commissioner concerned in the establishment of the Providence plantations in Narragansett Bay. As Thomas notes, the end of the monarchy of Charles I, and the coming of a Puritan administration, had had no effect on the City of London's desire to make money from slaves; nor did the change in the regime after the Restoration of 1660 alter that ambition.

It was during this time that the trading of slaves by London-based ships began on a regular basis. According to Thomas, one instruction of 1651 by the Guinea Company had asked a captain of one of their ships that he bring back to England 'fifteen or twenty lusty negers'. Another asked a captain on a ship said to be bound for London to 'put aboard...so many negers as your ship can carry'. London slave merchants were also involved in sending slaves to Barbados, as yet a third letter requested: 'We pray you buy as many lusty negers as she well can carry, and so despatch her to the Barbados'.

Members of the British royal family were the first members of a European royal family to go to West Africa - and purpose of the visit was slavery. In 1660, after the Restoration of Charles II, a new slave-trading company was set up in London called the Royal Adventurers into Africa. The unemployed Duke of York, the brother of King Charles II was the President of the new company which was given a monopoly of the English African trade for 1,000 years. Princess Henrietta ('Minette'), the King's sister, also had a share.

Investors, who were known as "The Royal Adventurers", each of invested 250 British pounds in the enterprise, and included most of the important politicians of the time: for example, the King's friend the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Craven, Lord Ashley, the Duke of Albermarle (General Monck), Lord Arlington, Lord Berkeley, Lord Crofts, Henry Jermyn (a prominent Catholic), and Lord Sandwich, the admiral who had brought back King Charles II from exile in Holland. The King's brother, the unemployed Duke of York, became President. In total, there were four members of the royal family, two dukes, a marquess, five earls, four barons, and seven knights.

When a new charter was issued for the company of Adventurers in January 1663, shareholders now included King Charles II, the Queen Mother, Henrietta Maria, and the Duke of York (who invested 2,000 British pounds). Other included new Queen, Catherine of Braganza (whose dowry of 330,000 British pounds was partly financed slave traders), and Samuel Pepys. The, so-called "philosopher of liberty", John Locke was another subscriber. As noted by Thomas: "The profits which could be made from trading slaves had by then been appreciated in England."

Thus, as Thomas observes, the commitment by the royal family to the African slave trade was strong. Few people know the origin of the money once used in England called "guineas" - but it will come as no surprise to know that the coin was named after a country in West Africa where the British were heavily - and profitably - involved in the slave trade.