When the reparations for slavery movement was launched a few years ago I wrote a light-hearted article dismissing it as yet another Nigerian scam. Since one of the movers behind it was Nigeria richest crook, Chief Moshood Abiola, that seemed a reasonable argument. And – legally speaking – since almost all African slaves were captured by fellow Africans in the first place before being sold to European traders, it would be the successors of the West African kingdoms, i.e. modern Western African states, who would be responsible for reparations. That would mean for example the people of Sierra Leone, average per capita income $548, would be paying reparations to the people of Barbados – per capita income $15,720.  

I work on Africa where the Atlantic slave trade is completely forgotten – except by those who live near the West African slave forts. As cynically and brutally as their ancestors sold the forbears of today’s African Americans, they rip off their descendents returning to find their roots. They boast about it and joke that African Americans are the stupid ones; they got caught. It seemed the equivalent of Brits jabbing at Australians with jokes about their criminal past. You may risk a smack on the nose but you aren’t going to hurt anyone’s soul. 

But Americans, Caribbeans and British who have African ancestors do not see it as something to joke about. This I learned from several painful discussions. They do not see themselves as random descendents of Africans who happen to have been enslaved in Africa and taken to America. They see themselves very much as the latest link in a chain, carrying a legacy that predestines their status in life, the way others see them, even their very souls. They feel their slave history is very much part of the way they live now – particularly in America. 

If this chain of disadvantage exists for the descendents of former slaves, is there an equivalent chain of advantage, imperceptible but real, for the descendents of the slave traders? I searched my soul extensively for a shadow of guilt from the slave trade. I could find none. Then I met David Potts who has dedicated his life to begging forgiveness from Africa for the slave trade by walking around in chains with a yoke on his neck. His antics confirmed my view that we have nothing to feel guilty about in that sense. 

But what about a tiny twisted thread of power and wealth that still conveys a link from then to now. Does this tug at our sense of who we are today? I began to read more and more about the slave trade. The argument continues about just how much the wealth of the slave trade fuelled the industrial revolution. It would have surely happened anyway but many people who put money into building canals, railways and trading companies had made that money from sugar in the West Indies. Maybe that capital turbo-charged the industrial revolution. But clearly we are not rich today simply because of the slave trade any more than Britain is successful today because it defeated Napoleon. 

Does that argument apply to a more important institution: the Royal Family? From King James II to George IV, the monarchs were large shareholders and on the boards of the biggest slaving companies; the Royal Africa Company and the South Sea Company. Can their descendents simply claim it was legal at the time? George III vigorously supported the slave trade and helped defeat the 1792 attempt to abolish it. William IV did the same, as Duke of Clarence telling the House of Lords in 1792 that slaves not treated badly but “lived in a state of humble happiness”. 

Admiral Horatio Nelson, a national hero by any standard, vigorously opposed the abolition of the slave trade, believing that to stop it would mean handing it over the French. He declared he would defend the rights of the slave owners and traders “while I have an arm to fight in their defence, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies”. His Royal Navy dedicated immense resources to protecting slavers.  

I had been taught about the slave trade at school but my impression was that it was conducted by pirates mostly beyond the control of the British state. I was shocked to learn just how deeply it was entwined in British institutions. And in America’s too. Simon Schama’s new book Rough Crossings confirms what others have hinted at: that the prospect of the abolition of slavery in the colonies by Britain in the 1770s was a - if not the – reason for the war of independence. So the nation that celebrates its birth as freedom from oppression was in fact created for the exact opposite reason. Then we discover that the vast majority of African Americans who fought in the American war of independence willingly fought for King George in the belief that he would grant them freedom. That is what Britain promised but never quite delivered on.