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

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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. Ana Lucia Araujo argues that these calls for reparations are not only not dead, but have a long and persevering history. She persuasively demonstrates that since the 18th century, enslaved and freed individuals started conceptualizing the idea of reparations in petitions, correspondences, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and judicial claims, written in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In different periods, despite the legality of slavery, slaves and freed people were conscious of having been victims of a great injustice. This is the first book to offer a transnational narrative history of the financial, material, and symbolic reparations for slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing from the voices of various social actors who identified themselves as the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, Araujo illuminates the multiple dimensions of the demands of reparations, including the period of slavery, the emancipation era, the post-abolition period, and the present. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction Reparations in the Past and Present 1 “Greatest Riches in All America Have Arisen From Our Blood and Tears” The roots of the Atlantic slave trade Slavery and enslaved Africans in the Americas Africans and the Atlantic slave trade Slavery as a profi table institution Negotiating and resisting White numbers, black bodies Slavery as a profitable human atrocity 2 “And What Should We Wait of These Brutish Spirits?” Reparations in times of revolution Reparations to free men, unlawfully enslaved The great storm of Saint-Domingue Former masters win again A lucrative institution in a nation divided Independence without emancipation The slave trade is alive and profi table Property rights above all rights The last bastion of slavery A pending debt 3 “We Helped to Pay This Cost” Paying the huge price Fighting for citizenship in precarious conditions Aborted citizenship and land redistribution Fighting for pensions as reparations for slavery A movement led by former slaves Requesting the former masters to pay back The Republican backlash Losing voting rights Reparations postponed 4 “What Else Will the Negro Expect?” “America claims she has nothing for us” “Never knowed any what got land or mules nor nothing” The struggle for reparations under the Communist threat Reparations for slavery and the agrarian issue “’Cause it was built off our backs” “And all of that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages” “We have been slaves too long” New paths for reparations 5 “It’s Time for Us to Get Paid” The new wave of demands of reparations Combining litigation and massive demonstrations Reparations in a global era A new transnational era for the demands of reparations A continuous battle Epilogue Unfinished Struggle ABBREVIATIONS NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX