Irritated in Africa

John Sydenham

I am in East Africa relaxing in the February heat. This evening six children aged from four to ten raced ahead of us up the beach to show us where we could find a good restaurant. It reminded me of when I was a kid and we all used to roam free. They were laughing and happy.

Later in the evening we sat in an expensive cafe on the seafront that was full of Westerners. At some tables everyone was looking at their smartphones. The beach was white sand, the sea was blue, the palms were heavy with coconuts but they were on their phones.

There are several museums about slavery in Zanzibar City. I think UNESCO was responsible for the displays. These deliberately obfuscated the history of slavery.

The history of slavery over the past three hundred years is simple. Slavery was accepted almost everywhere until the late eighteenth century. It was not forbidden in the Bible or the Koran. To be absolutely clear, the bulk of the people in the world believed slavery was part of the natural order of things until the late eighteenth century. Slavery was not a ‘sin’ and was only a crime in a few countries such as England.

The English Quakers and Evangelical Anglicans believed that slavery was a sin. Under the leadership of William Wilberforce the attitudes to the Slave Trade and to Slavery itself were changed globally. Great Britain was a global power and when the Slave Trade was abolished by Parliament in 1807 it was able to slowly stop slaving across the world.

The point needs repeating: the history of slavery is simple. At the end of the eighteenth century the British taught the world that slavery was a sin. The British Empire had the power to enforce laws against slavery across the world throughout the nineteenth century and so greatly reduced slavery globally. This was a huge philanthropic achievement of the British Empire. It changed the world and should be universally respected.

To blame the British for slaving or slavery before 1800 is a scurrilous attack on the modern British people. It is like blaming Florence Nightingale for deaths in dirty hospitals before she cleaned up medicine. It is like blaming Enlightenment philosophers for the deaths of witches in the middle ages.

If you have an ancestor who was a slave before 1800 it was just their bad luck. The Omanis, Benin, British, French etc. were not to ‘blame’, no-one thought it was blameworthy. Slavery was not a sin or a crime. The British taught the world the value of freedom and the evil of slavery. Any modern politicians who ‘apologise’ for slavery before 1830-50 are creeps, British apologists are doubly creepy and traitors to their ancestors and country if they are apologising for British slaving in the eighteenth century.

Which brings us back to the museum display. It did not cover the history of slavery honestly. It did not say that everyone (except the slaves) was happy with slavery until the British rescued the world from this evil.

It took a long time for the Omani Empire to liberate the slaves in East Africa. The British stopped direct slave trading by the Omanis after 1822 but the French (and the USA) supplied Omani vessels with French papers so that the Royal Navy could not intervene. In 1873 the British forced the Sultan of Zanzibar to finally end slaving under threat of military action.

Telegram recording the signing of the 1873 treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar

Zanzibar became a British protectorate in 1890 (an autonomous state under British protection) which ensured full compliance with anti-slaving laws. The invasion of Nigeria by the British (after repeated treaty violations) stopped Atlantic slaving and the control of Zanzibar stopped Indian Ocean slaving. Those cynics who think that this anti-slaving activity was just a pretext for empire building should read the contemporary proceedings of the British Parliament or the British newspapers of the time. (See Hansard 1844, this is really worth reading).

It is sad that our creepy politicians ‘apologise’ for slavery and do not tell the truth about abolition. The abolition of slavery was the most sparkling achievement of Britain when it was a global power. Other people may have wished to end slavery but it was Britain that had the power and used it. The UK is now a country that is educated and governed by treacherous Internationalists.

I have penned this article on slavery because I sat with a Tanzanian businessman the other day who told me that the British Empire was founded on slavery and the Germans liberated the slaves. He was reasonably well educated. His country fell under Soviet influence for a while which might explain his views. I really did not know where to start… I left him with his falsehoods. As a British citizen I did not blame him, I was livid with the feeble UK governments and politicians who put me in the position of being reviled for slavery. What are the ‘British Council’ and ‘World Service’ doing for their money? So many British people know so little of our history that they would probably have apologised for freeing this man’s ancestors.

The British opened the eyes of the world to the sin of slavery. They are the last people on earth who should apologise.

See The Role of Slavery in British Economic Growth