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History is a wonderful, thought provoking subject. I am always glad when Britain can claim to be the first when it comes to setting a historical precedent. This, however, I’m in two minds

about. A team of British academics have received £1 million in government funding to compile the first ever index of investors in Britain’s role in the slave trade. The _Dictionary of

British Slave Traders_ will document in great detail the estimated 6,500 Britons who took part and invested in the practice between the 16th and 19th century. Speaking to CNN, the project

leader, William Pettigrew, said: “We’re looking at the entire population of investors in the slave trade – not just independent investors, but also the corporations that were involved.” Some

of the corporations with historic ties to slavery include the Bank of England and the pub chain Greene King. In keeping with historic firsts, the dictionary will also include detailed

biographies of lesser-known shareholders and smaller investors. While one always welcomes new contributions to knowledge in any discourse, I must question the motivation and timing for such

a database, set to be published and made available online in 2024. In explaining the rationale for the dictionary’s existence, Pettigrew, a Professor of History at the University of

Lancaster, argues that the Black Lives Matter movement “made it even more important that people have a resource of high-quality information to go to to obtain data about the breadth of

Britain’s involvement in the slave trade”. Pettigrew is correct. The British Empire was directly involved. As a nation, we were intimately involved in the morally reprehensible practice of

trading slaves. Of the estimated 12.5 million slaves shipped out of Africa, our ancestors transported around three million people, predominantly between 1660 and 1807, to the Caribbean and

southern colonies of North America. Most were forced to work on sugar and cotton plantations in the scorching heat for 12 hours a day without pay and no legal recourse against physical abuse

and mistreatment. Shipped in appalling conditions, packed in tight and with little to no fresh air, dehydration and disease befell many on the six-week crossing of the Atlantic ocean. One

estimate has it that between 1672 and 1687 as many as a quarter were “lost in transit”. Human beings were treated like any other commodity. When no longer of use, they were disposed of. The

bodies were simply thrown overboard. It seems a truism to say that any modern day discussion of slavery will inevitably have a Eurocentric vision of history. In reality, slavery is an evil

that has plagued every corner of the globe for thousands of years. Narmer, the first pharaoh of Egypt, held slaves circa 3,000 BC. In Ancient Greece, slavery was so common that Aristotle saw

the practice as essential to Greek society. During the Roman Empire, it is estimated that by the beginning of the Christian era, almost half of Italy’s population were enslaved. Slavery

began in the Islamic world in the 7th century, while in the 8th and 9th centuries Vikings captured Eastern Europeans and sold them to slave markets in Egypt. Throughout history, people from

just about every continent have enslaved others: for centuries, Asians enslaved fellow Asians and Africans enslaved other Africans. Nor were Europeans the only people guilty of transporting

slaves from one continent to another. The historian Robert C Davis estimates that between the 16th and 18th century over a million Europeans were captured by North Africa’s Barbary coast

pirates. A salient part of the BLM movement is to dismantle capitalism. It was explicitly stated in their manifesto. They see capitalism as an inherently racist, “systemic” ideology.

Slavery, we are told, was the British Empire’s “start up” money, leading Martin Luther King to state that “…capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves…”  In other

words, capitalism was conceived in sin, the sin of slavery. And more often than not, cotton is cited as the progenitor of capitalism. In 1830, American per capita GDP was already one of the

highest in the world. But the huge advance in wealth and prosperity came after 1865 when the country abolished slavery. In the 150 years since the Civil War, America’s population has grown

900 per cent and its national GDP has increased 12,000 per cent. It was innovation and ingenuity, not capital accumulation, that ushered in the global rise in human prosperity. This

exponential rise is something the classical liberal economic historian Deirdre McCloskey calls “the great enrichment”. It was the birth of property rights and a liberalised free market that

led to extraordinary advances in technology and engineering. It was only when human labour was supplanted by steam and mechanised agricultural machines that Americans could dispense with

slavery. As Guy Sorman writes: “The replacement of labor with capital investment helped usher in the American industrial revolution, as the first industrial entrepreneurs took advantage of

engineering advances developed in the fields. The southern states made a great economic as well as moral error in deciding to keep exploiting slaves instead of hiring well-paid workers and

embracing new engineering technologies. The South started to catch up with the rest of the nation economically only after turning fully to advanced engineering in the 1960s as a response to

rising labor costs.” So, contrary to popular opinion, slavery did not play an important role in the industrial revolution. Some have argued that slavery in fact delayed the industrialisation

of the southern states, handing an exceptional advantage to the North during the Civil War. Economic historians Alan L Olmstead and Paul W Rhode tell us that “US cotton played no role in

kick-starting the industrial revolution.” They argue that although cotton played an important role in antebellum export-led growth, the overall contribution to the nation’s GDP was just five

per cent. Important, but far from providing the seed capital for a nation as large as the United States. Whereas King Coal helped give birth to the first Industrial Revolution, in Britain,

as in America, cotton was less the king and something more reminiscent of a courtier. As Deirdre McCloskey has explained, only a small fraction of foreign trade in Britain came from the

products of slave labour. Conversely, the amount of money spent on eliminating the trade was immense. Historian David Eltis believes the cost to British taxpayers to suppress the trade

(adjusting for inflation) was £1.5 billion. As he writes: “In absolute terms the British spent almost as much attempting to suppress the trade in the forty-seven years, 1816-62, as they

received in profits over the same length of time leading up to 1807.” If slave labour really was responsible for a nation’s prosperity, we only need take a look at a country that enslaved a

similar amount of people. Between 1500 and 1866, the Portuguese Empire is estimated to have exported six million slaves out of Africa — four million of whom were sent to Brazil. Both

countries are replete with vast natural resources — cotton accounted for 30 per cent of Brazil’s exports in 1870. So a cursory, comparative analysis should reveal immense prosperity in

Brazil — after all, the country abolished slavery a full 23 years later than the U.S. Brazil’s GDP is $2 trillion, whereas that of the United States is $21 trillion. As for GDP per capita,

as Angus Maddison shows, Brazil’s is $5,563 while that of the US is $28,458. At both the individual and national level, slavery has not made Brazil rich. Although very few gained immense

wealth from slavery, it would be naive of me to assume that no British individual gained financially from the slave trade. If we are to be morally consistent then the _Dictionary _needs to

include John Edward Taylor. Taylor was a cotton merchant whose wealth was irrevocably intertwined with the slave trade. His personal fortune came directly from the forced labour of enslaved

African men and women who worked on cotton plantations in the southern colonies of America. In 1821, he founded the_ Manchester Guardian_, now the_ Guardian_ — the newspaper that

persistently inveighs against British institutions for their involvement in the slave trade. One headline ran “A shameful period of English history”, slamming Barclay’s Bank and the brewers

Greene King among others for financial gains from slavery. While on the subject of hypocrisy, what of the near silence from both academics and activists like BLM when it comes to modern day

slavery? The United Nations International Labor Organisation (ILO), states there are three times as many in slavery now than were captured and sold during the 350 year life-span of the

transatlantic slave trade. With an estimated forty million people held in debt bondage and forced marriage across the globe, “new slavery” as the ILO call it, is big business. Criminal

networks earn upwards of $150 billion annually. According to Siddharth Kara, economist at Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, “Modern slavery is far and away more profitable now than at any

point in human history.” While I welcome the potential contribution the _Dictionary _will bring to future historical enquiry, I question its timing and motivation. I feel this is an

implicit exercise in appeasement of an overtly radical political movement. Other than legitimate academic debate — which should always be encouraged — what else could this database be used

for? It has the potential to be weaponised by activists, for the purpose of inducing guilt to derive both ideological and financial advantage against individuals and small business owners

who may not be aware of their family history. I ask, what can they do to remedy this? There is little more these companies, corporations and individuals can do to address the despicable

moral comportment of their ancestors. Other than offering financial compensation in the form of reparations (which is in itself a highly questionable), I see little that can be done. I fear

that the _Dictionary of British Slave Traders _will merely incite racial division and exacerbate resentment. The sins of the fathers — even slavery — should never be visited on the children.

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