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I agree with you, plus if you notice, after slavery in the UK pretty much ended before their Industrial Revolution started. In the US North, around the time of

by jmclnx 2y ago

I agree with you, plus if you notice, after slavery in the UK pretty much ended before their Industrial Revolution started. In the US North, around the time of independence is when slavery there was banned. In both places the "IR" started not long afterwards, with the UK starting first. Probably because labor was not cheap anymore, people had to find a new way of production.

cm2187 2y ago
Slavery has been banned in the UK since at least the Middle Ages.
- defrost 2y ago
  With the loophole | caveat that in 1832 there were 46,000 documented British slave owners, most living within the UK, including relatives of Gladstone and Orwell. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”. The compensation commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m the government had set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn. The compensation of Britain’s 46,000 slave owners was the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. Not only did the slaves receive nothing, under another clause of the act they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four years after their supposed liberation. In effect, the enslaved paid part of the bill for their own manumission. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-history-slavery-buried-scale-revealed https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-histor...
  - speedbird 2y ago
    Yes, but no slaves allowed in the UK is the key point.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Just slave owners, including the Church of England, and effective slaves via parishes and otherwise geographically and class bound people with near zero options outside the local manor.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  Yes, they offshored it to Ireland.

by jmclnx 2y ago

cm2187 2y ago

Slavery has been banned in the UK since at least the Middle Ages.

defrost 2y ago
With the loophole | caveat that in 1832 there were 46,000 documented British slave owners, most living within the UK, including relatives of Gladstone and Orwell. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”. The compensation commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m the government had set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn. The compensation of Britain’s 46,000 slave owners was the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. Not only did the slaves receive nothing, under another clause of the act they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four years after their supposed liberation. In effect, the enslaved paid part of the bill for their own manumission. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-history-slavery-buried-scale-revealed https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-histor...
- speedbird 2y ago
  Yes, but no slaves allowed in the UK is the key point.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Just slave owners, including the Church of England, and effective slaves via parishes and otherwise geographically and class bound people with near zero options outside the local manor.
bpodgursky 2y ago
Yes, they offshored it to Ireland.