Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade A Transnational and Comparative History

Slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are among the most heinous crimes against humanity committed in the modern era. Yet, to this day no former slave society in the Americas has paid reparations to former slaves or their descendants. European countries have never compensated their former colonies in the Americas, whose wealth relied on slave labor, to a greater or lesser extent. Likewise, no African nation ever obtained any form of reparations for the Atlantic slave trade.

This is the first book to present a narrative history of the demands of financial, material, and symbolic reparations for slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. It explores a myriad of written primary sources in several languages, including abolitionist pamphlets, parliamentary debates, petitions by former slaves, newspaper articles, congressional bills, as well as public discourses by black activists and politicians in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The book draws from a transnational approach, associating social and cultural history, in order to grasp a transatlantic system that interconnected three continents for more than three hundred years. The various chapters examine the multiple dimensions of the demands of financial, material, and symbolic reparations, including the period of slavery, the emancipation era, the postabolition period, and the present.

By focusing on the voices of various social actors who identified themselves as the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, this book shows why the demands of reparations have been emphasized or dismissed in public debates held in former slave societies.

Introduction: Redressing Past Wrongs
1. Reparations in the Age of the Slave Trade and Slavery
2. Reparations in the Era of Emancipation
3. Reparations in the Era of Unfinished Citizenship
4. Reparations in the Civil Rights Era
5. Reparations in a Global Era
6. Epilogue: Reparations in the Past and the Present
Bibliography
Index

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