UK stole 25m years of life and labour through slavery in Barbados, says report | Reparations and reparative justice
Britain stole 25 million years of life and labor through slavery in Barbados, research by an international team of experts has found.
Their report concludes that Barbados’ population of African descent has suffered an estimated loss of up to $2 trillion (£1.5 trillion) from 200 years of chattel slavery.
The head of the investigation team, Coleman Bazelon, said the total reflected the magnitude of the damage inflicted, but emphasized that the figure was the actual basis for the dialogue, not a compensation bill.
“This research does not create a bill for anyone to pay,” Bazelon said. “This is an accounting for the harm done… The starting point of reconciliation is the recognition of the harm done.”
Barbados was the first major British colony to force enslaved people to work on its plantations, beginning in the early 1600s. It is also a founding country of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), which advocates for reparations.
Bazelon was one of the lead authors of the 2023 Brattle analysis. Report on reparations for transatlantic chattel slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean. The analysis estimates that chattel slavery affected 19.9 million people, including those who were captured, those who lost their lives while being transported from Africa, those who worked the plantations, and their descendants.
After Britain abolished slavery on 1 August 1834, enslavers were paid £20 million in compensation for the loss of their “property”. The enslaved people themselves received nothing.
Bazelon conducted this new research through a nonprofit organization Public Interest Experts. “What they wanted me to focus on was: What was the value of labor stolen through slavery in Barbados?” Bazelon said. he said.
Barbados’ minister for pan-African relations and heritage, Trevor Prescod, said at an event in Barbados earlier this month to preview the research: “You can’t erase history… My job is to provide an African-centric corrective to the imbalances that occurred during the period of slavery.”
The report will eventually go to the cabinet for approval, the minister said. “I feel that the public must walk with us to our goal… The many areas where we have been denied progress will be at the center of our call and demands for reparations and restorative justice,” he said.
Bazelon gave a detailed breakdown of the methodology and numbers: “The value of the labor that was provided but not paid for is somewhere between $500 billion and $700 billion. But of course, a large part of the life of an enslaved person working in Barbados was also stolen from them. So I think it’s very appropriate to include the short life of the enslaved people in Barbados. And the short life estimate is somewhere between about $1.1 trillion and $1.1 trillion. $1.3 trillion. So those.” put it together, you get about $1.6 trillion to $2 trillion in value of labor and life stolen directly from enslaved people in Barbados.”
He added: “The important point from a contextual perspective is that [about] 379 thousand people got off the boat from Africa in Barbados… There were another 78 thousand people who did not get on or off the boat and died in the middle passage. And we estimate there are another 335,000 people born into slavery in Barbados.”
The findings provide insight into the significant extent of the damage done.
Prof Alan Lester of the University of Sussex, one of the leading experts on the British empire, said: “When you add up the value of lives devoted to making money in Barbados, Britain’s oldest slave plantation colony, it is not surprising that you get such a large figure.
“The inequalities entrenched by slavery were further exacerbated when reparations were paid to slave owners rather than slaves, and independence left the Caribbean islands decapitalized and indebted to western institutions.”
A 2023 Brattle analysis estimated the value of damages from transatlantic chattel slavery across 31 territories in the Americas and the Caribbean to total $100–131 trillion; of which $77-108 trillion represented losses from the enslavement era and $77-108 trillion represented losses that have continued since then.
Analysis was then deployed an international symposium On reparations and international law, he concluded that transatlantic slavery was illegal.
At the UN general assembly last month, 123 countries voted to make chattel slavery the greatest crime against humanity. The United States, Israel and Argentina voted against the resolution. If 52 countriesBritain and many other European countries also abstained. Previously, British prime minister Keir Starmer had ruled out direct monetary payments for reparations.
David Lascelles, co-founder of Heirs of Slavery, a group of descendants of British enslavers that encourages others to accept and discuss restorative justice, said: “My distant ancestor Henry Lascelles made his fortune in Barbados in the 18th century. Now, 300 years later, it is time for us all to realize that there is a debt that must be paid, a debt that is of course about money but not just about money.”
The group’s other co-founder, Alex Renton, added that “addressing the legacies of this most horrific event in Britain’s modern history is morally and practically the right thing to do for the nation.”
