Previously unseen documents were recently found, revealing that Britain’s wealthiest families received financial compensation – more than $20 billion in today’s dollars – to make up for the abolishment of slavery. The records exposed who and how much was paid.
About one-fifth of wealthy Victorian Britons obtained the majority of their fortune from the slave trade. What does that look like for today’s well-off families? Just how much have they profited from the atrocities committed by their slaveholding ancestors?
One man who owned 415 slaves was paid £20,511 – a sum equivalent to around $22 million. In other cases, the number of payments would have equaled billions of dollars in today’s economy.
Plenty of famous Britons today are descendants of slave-owners listed in the document. This includes ancestors of former Prime Minister David Cameron, authors Graham Greene and George Orwell, a couple of big names in the corrupt banking system, and of course, members of the royal family.
The study of these documents, which involved 46,000 records of compensation given to British slave-owners, will be put into a database and made available online.
And don’t think it’s just Britain – this happened in the U.S. as well. When we talk about reparations, it’s crucial to note that reparations for slavery DID happen – just not to whom you might expect.