Some humble advice for King Charles in his discussions with Caribbean politicians who think Britain owes them squillions, says Tim Sargent: slavery was in the Caribbean and Africa long before the British came along.
If it is not too late, I would like to offer some humble advice to our unhappy monarch in his discussions with Caribbean politicians who think that Britain owes them squillions of pounds because of its involvement in trans-Atlantic slavery that ended many generations ago. He may be constitutionally constrained in what he can say but in case he is willing to go slightly off-piste or simply wants to write, for the record, an alternative speech that he wishes he could have given, my advice has two themes. One is the much longer and more brutal history of enslavement of Africans by Muslim slavers. The other is the slavery and worse that existed in the islands of the Caribbean long before any European or African set eyes on them.
The first point has had some belated coverage in the media, along with the fact that the enslavement of Africans by other Africans was endemic long before Europeans started buying their captives but it will bear repeating. When I wrote about slavery in the Daily Sceptic a few weeks ago, I mentioned that it involved Africans imposing slave status on more than half the population of some of their tribes and empires and I noted an important economic aspect that had also been absent from non-academic accounts. It was that one reason African slave-takers were so keen to sell their captives to Europeans was that slaves commanded a higher price the further away from the point of capture they were sold, because that made them less likely to escape and return to their homelands. Shipping them several thousand miles to the west made that impossible.
My article mentioned the large number of slaves captured by Muslims and sold to Muslims in North and East Africa, Arabia and the Ottoman Empire. Numerically, Islamic slavery at least equalled Europe’s and may have exceeded it, but I had not then read Justin Marozzi’s 2025 Captives and Companions: a history of slavery and the slave trade in the Islamic world. It’s an eye-opener and in these hypersensitive times, perhaps it should come with trigger warnings for readers made queasy by sanguinary descriptions. The growing reparations industry naturally cites the horrors and mortality of the Atlantic crossing – the ‘middle passage’ – but at least the slaves crammed into the holds in horribly unsanitary conditions didn’t have to walk for hundreds of miles or more roped together. The mortality in those caravans was probably at least as high. Furthermore (trigger warning) it was neither the African suppliers nor their European customers who castrated hundreds of thousands of their African captives to provide a supply of eunuchs, often removing their penises as well. Quite the opposite. Caribbean slave owners presumably rejoiced when their slaves produced offspring, increasing their human capital without having to be purchased. The mortality rate from a combination of castration and forced marches could often be as high as 90%, since many of those castrati had not reached puberty. Marozzi interviewed some of the guardians of the Kaaba in Mecca who by tradition, until the 1970s, had to be eunuchs. The oldest of them was castrated in the 1940s. Muslim slavery was also at least as racist and contemptuous of black people as the Europeans. Several Arabic words characterise sub-Saharan Africans and those from Sudan, Ethiopia and east Africa, as well as their countries of origin, by their blackness. The N-word is not a European invention. Marozzi is not dismissive of Islam; his copious writing about Islamic countries and culture is often lyrical and affectionate. Not many of his modern fellow historians crossed the Sahara on a camel as he did.
The other thing that His Majesty ought to know is an aspect of the history of the smaller Caribbean islands, including Antigua where the reparations discussions are taking place. I overnighted there a few decades ago and turned to its Wikipedia entry to refresh my memory, since the main thing I recall about it was being told by a black citizen of another island that Antigua was a place where the locals only smiled if you paid them to do so. Wikipedia, which is not exactly famous for defending or excusing slavery, had some interesting and relevant things to say about the kind of slavery that was going strong there long before the sugar plantations. “The first inhabitants,” it says, “were the Guanahatabey people.
Eventually, the Arawak migrated from the mainland, followed by the Carib. The Arawak were the first well-documented group of indigenous people to settle Antigua. They paddled to the island by canoe from present-day Venezuela, pushed out by the Carib, another indigenous people. Most of the Arawak left Antigua about AD 1100. … Those who remained were raided by the Carib coming from Venezuela. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Caribs’ superior weapons and seafaring prowess allowed them to defeat most Arawak nations in the West Indies. They enslaved some and [trigger warning 2] cannibalised others.
There is not a word of horror or condemnation and the lack of documentation about the Guanahatabey possibly means that they too were enslaved or eaten by less humanitarian colonisers.
A few hundred miles to the west of Antigua, the Aztec empire not only enslaved captives in its many wars with local tribes. It also (trigger warning 3) sacrificed hundreds of them at a time to the sun god, removing their beating hearts with obsidian knives. Slavery, in short, was an ancient and widespread custom. I argued that its acceptance might have died out in European countries from around the time of the Renaissance if European explorers had not encountered Africans who were keen to sell them slaves. That era lasted about 400 years and, after 1805, the Royal Navy was the main factor in ending it.
Islamic slavery, as Marozzi relates, began with Mohammed himself and was not a new development in Arabia. In some respects, as I recognised, it could be different from the Atlantic trade – hence the “Companions” of Marozzi’s title – but they had a lot in common, including the brutality. It remained legal and often open in many Islamic countries until the early 20th century and in some until the 1970s. Though now technically illegal, it continues to this day in several of them. If the descendants of enslaved Africans want to talk compensation, they should start with the oil-rich rulers of Arabia and the Gulf States. Compared with most present-day sub-Saharan countries, Britain and France have bequeathed to their former Caribbean colonies stable governments, parliaments, a free press that helps to limit corruption, efficient and adequate food production, reasonable infrastructure and health services and no tribal warfare. Not many of their citizens seem keen to relocate to the lands of their ancestors.
This article was sourced HERE
My article mentioned the large number of slaves captured by Muslims and sold to Muslims in North and East Africa, Arabia and the Ottoman Empire. Numerically, Islamic slavery at least equalled Europe’s and may have exceeded it, but I had not then read Justin Marozzi’s 2025 Captives and Companions: a history of slavery and the slave trade in the Islamic world. It’s an eye-opener and in these hypersensitive times, perhaps it should come with trigger warnings for readers made queasy by sanguinary descriptions. The growing reparations industry naturally cites the horrors and mortality of the Atlantic crossing – the ‘middle passage’ – but at least the slaves crammed into the holds in horribly unsanitary conditions didn’t have to walk for hundreds of miles or more roped together. The mortality in those caravans was probably at least as high. Furthermore (trigger warning) it was neither the African suppliers nor their European customers who castrated hundreds of thousands of their African captives to provide a supply of eunuchs, often removing their penises as well. Quite the opposite. Caribbean slave owners presumably rejoiced when their slaves produced offspring, increasing their human capital without having to be purchased. The mortality rate from a combination of castration and forced marches could often be as high as 90%, since many of those castrati had not reached puberty. Marozzi interviewed some of the guardians of the Kaaba in Mecca who by tradition, until the 1970s, had to be eunuchs. The oldest of them was castrated in the 1940s. Muslim slavery was also at least as racist and contemptuous of black people as the Europeans. Several Arabic words characterise sub-Saharan Africans and those from Sudan, Ethiopia and east Africa, as well as their countries of origin, by their blackness. The N-word is not a European invention. Marozzi is not dismissive of Islam; his copious writing about Islamic countries and culture is often lyrical and affectionate. Not many of his modern fellow historians crossed the Sahara on a camel as he did.
The other thing that His Majesty ought to know is an aspect of the history of the smaller Caribbean islands, including Antigua where the reparations discussions are taking place. I overnighted there a few decades ago and turned to its Wikipedia entry to refresh my memory, since the main thing I recall about it was being told by a black citizen of another island that Antigua was a place where the locals only smiled if you paid them to do so. Wikipedia, which is not exactly famous for defending or excusing slavery, had some interesting and relevant things to say about the kind of slavery that was going strong there long before the sugar plantations. “The first inhabitants,” it says, “were the Guanahatabey people.
Eventually, the Arawak migrated from the mainland, followed by the Carib. The Arawak were the first well-documented group of indigenous people to settle Antigua. They paddled to the island by canoe from present-day Venezuela, pushed out by the Carib, another indigenous people. Most of the Arawak left Antigua about AD 1100. … Those who remained were raided by the Carib coming from Venezuela. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Caribs’ superior weapons and seafaring prowess allowed them to defeat most Arawak nations in the West Indies. They enslaved some and [trigger warning 2] cannibalised others.
There is not a word of horror or condemnation and the lack of documentation about the Guanahatabey possibly means that they too were enslaved or eaten by less humanitarian colonisers.
A few hundred miles to the west of Antigua, the Aztec empire not only enslaved captives in its many wars with local tribes. It also (trigger warning 3) sacrificed hundreds of them at a time to the sun god, removing their beating hearts with obsidian knives. Slavery, in short, was an ancient and widespread custom. I argued that its acceptance might have died out in European countries from around the time of the Renaissance if European explorers had not encountered Africans who were keen to sell them slaves. That era lasted about 400 years and, after 1805, the Royal Navy was the main factor in ending it.
Islamic slavery, as Marozzi relates, began with Mohammed himself and was not a new development in Arabia. In some respects, as I recognised, it could be different from the Atlantic trade – hence the “Companions” of Marozzi’s title – but they had a lot in common, including the brutality. It remained legal and often open in many Islamic countries until the early 20th century and in some until the 1970s. Though now technically illegal, it continues to this day in several of them. If the descendants of enslaved Africans want to talk compensation, they should start with the oil-rich rulers of Arabia and the Gulf States. Compared with most present-day sub-Saharan countries, Britain and France have bequeathed to their former Caribbean colonies stable governments, parliaments, a free press that helps to limit corruption, efficient and adequate food production, reasonable infrastructure and health services and no tribal warfare. Not many of their citizens seem keen to relocate to the lands of their ancestors.
This article was sourced HERE
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