[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader is about revisiting the long consequences of slavery and reviving calls for deserved compensations. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–When we read historical textbooks, the limits of our critical capacity become painfully clear: they show us that our historical memory tolerates everything; the need for redress for historical events, such as Slavery or the Inquisition, does not.
1. Recognizing slavery as the gravest crime against humanity implies more than a mere gesture of remembrance; it compels us to reexamine not only the past, but also the historical legitimacy of the global order built upon that past. The primitive accumulation of Capitalism, the expansion of European maritime empires and the development of modern finance cannot be understood without that system of capture, transport, and exploitation of millions of Africans. (At least 12.5 million people were torn from the continent between the 15th and 19th centuries). The consequences of that process persist to this day in the form of structural inequalities.
2. Slavery was, not a marginal aberration, but one of the pillars upon which Western modernity was built. The discussion can no longer be limited to the past; it necessarily becomes a discussion about wealth, power, historical legacy, and political responsibility in the present –and, ultimately, about who benefited from that system and who, to this day, continues to pay for its consequences.
3. Slavery was, not just another trade, but rather an organized structure designed to turn bodies into commodities and violence into accumulation, establishing a logic that did not disappear with abolition, but was instead transformed into persistent inequalities within the global system. Inequality was not a consequence of the system; it was its organizing principle –a division of the world that continues to shape the economic and political hierarchies of the international order.
4. Slavery was, not an excess of the system, but its very essence. There would have been no modern expansion without that foundation of systematic violence. If slavery was the engine of the system, its abolition was neither a spontaneous humanitarian act nor the natural result of moral progress. It was the product of rebellions, wars and political decisions shaped by interests, economic tensions, and power struggles.
5. Slavery ended as a legal institution, but not as a social structure. Its economic, racial, and political effects, not only persisted, but were reconfigured within the new nation-states. As numerous studies on inequality show, Afro-descendant populations continue to face higher levels of poverty, less access to education and lower political representation (think jerrymandering in the US).
6. Recognizing slavery as ‘the gravest crime against humanity’ opens a discussion today about historical responsibilities that the powers of the North are unwilling to assume. Admitting that slavery was one of the foundational crimes of modernity also implies accepting that it was, not a peripheral episode, but one of the great engines of Western accumulation.
7. The slave trade and slavery were, not a stain on the system, but helped build it. The wealth accumulated in the North was not the exclusive result of commercial ingenuity or the industrial revolution, but also of mass abduction, forced labor and a racialized economy.
8. The discussion on reparations is neither a moral anomaly nor a sentimental demand. It is a direct challenge to the historical legitimacy of that despicable order.
Bottom line
9. This example of history is, neither an isolated gesture nor a symbolic initiative, but a move within a larger dispute, namely, who defines history, who manages its consequences and who has the right to demand justice –and, ultimately, who is in a position to transform that demand into effective political power on the international stage.
10. History is accepted, but its consequences are rejected. The crime is acknowledged, but the structure that made it possible is protected. In refusal and abstention, not only does the discomfort with the past survive; the decision to uphold a world that still functions on its foundations also survives.
11. Because the real question is no longer what slavery was. The real question is how much of that system remains standing. (excerpted from Beto Cremonte)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
The Politics of Resistance (Ramesh Jaura)
–The opposition of Western governments is not only legal but ideological. They often argue that contemporary citizens should not be held liable for crimes committed centuries ago. They prefer forward-looking development aid over backwards-looking restitution.
Critics counter that this logic ignores continuity —that states, institutions, and families continue to benefit from wealth created under slavery. Banks, universities, insurance firms, and even governments that compensated slave owners rather than the enslaved still carry active legacies of that exploitation.
There is a misconception: Reparations are not about guilt; they are about unearned advantage. The wealth transfer from African bodies built modern Capitalism. (Sirin Patel) We are fighting the echoes of history in present-day economies. The cycle of exploitation simply evolves –from plantations to supply chains. (Theresa May)
There is also a geopolitical calculus. For the U.S. and Europe, opening the door to reparations could embolden demands from other regions –including calls from indigenous peoples or formerly colonized nations in Asia. Recognition, they fear, could become a precedent difficult to contain.
But for the Global South, that precedent is exactly the point. Linking these two struggles –the memorial and the contemporary– will determine whether the recent UN resolution on slavery becomes a turning point or just a symbolic footnote. As long as the most powerful states resist financial and moral accountability, reparations risk remaining a rhetorical project –universally affirmed, selectively acted upon.
Recognition is not to reopen wounds, but to understand who still bleeds. (Amina Musa) Over 50 million people remain trapped in modern bondage, from forced labor and debt slavery to sexual exploitation.
The future depends on whether moral truth can evolve into material justice –whether the descendants of empire will finally join the descendants of the enslaved in rewriting the terms of a shared humanity. (R. Jaura)
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