One tedious aspect of Britain’s post-imperial melancholia is the number of amateur historians who would rather we stopped going on about our role in the slave trade. Isn’t it all in the past? Weren’t we the first to abolish it anyway? In April, the Reform party announced a new policy of halting visas to people from countries seeking slavery reparations from Britain. “The United Kingdom is not an ATM for ethnic grievances from the past,” the party’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, said.
Unfortunately for those who would rather forget, the slave trade, as William Pettigrew argues in this grimly important book, can be found “in the depths of Britain’s grain”. Ninety per cent of the enslaved Africans transported to America went on British ships, and slave traders’ actions transformed Britain in ways that still resonate today.
