Quantifying exploitation, and steps forward
This is about clarity for a former colonial power which has barely begun to deal with its past. For a long time there have been attempts to minimise the brutality of slavery, to glorify and romanticise colonial rule, over-hype the role of British elites in abolishing slavery and underplay the grass roots struggles to end slavery and colonial exploitation. Those working to draw attention to Britain’s hidden histories often find themselves at the centre of a storm of controversy.
If British people don’t understand the past, they can’t understand the present. It is vital to understand how the City of London and Britain thrived from slavery, and colonialism, and how that continues to be played out today, nationally, and globally.
Quantifying that and trying to address it is critical. And there are precedents.
In the United States University of Connecticut researcher Thomas Craemer calculates the value of reparations with present day equivalence of between $5.9 trillion and $14.2 trillion. He was inspired to undertake his research based on reparations Germany agreed to pay to Jewish victims of the Nazis, an amount of over $89 billion since 2012.
Recent research by the economist Utsa Patnaik calculated how over around 200 years, the East India Company and the British Raj siphoned out at least £9.2 trillion (or $44.6 trillion; since the exchange rate was $4.8 per pound sterling during much of the colonial period). According to research by Robert Allen in 2005, real wages in India declined by 23.3% during the 350 years of British colonial rule. Contrary to what seems to be popular opinion in the UK, Britain de-developed India. I discussed immigraton as reparations in the Taxcast, the Tax Justice Network’s monthly podcast here with award winning author Suketu Mehta speaking about his new book: This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto on what he sees as the fastest way to fix global inequalities and injustices.
https://taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/#:~:text=It's%20hard%20to%20believe%20but,of%20the%20abolition%20of%20slavery.
But hey, who is counting?
Raider
