mark devine

The fact that European government have managed to convince their citizens that the official abolition of slavery in their countries in Britain, France, Belgium in the mid 19th century meant the end of the practice is precisely why we need reparations. Reparation starts with reinstating the truth and correcting history. Slavery didn’t end following the 1833 Act in Britain of the April 1848 Act in France that officially abolished it. It was rebranded as “forced labor” and redeployed intensely in the newly conquered territories in Africa. The official dates of the abolition of slavery only applied to their colonies in the Americas and the West Indies where they were mostly kicked out through liberation wars that led to the independence of those nations. But slavery continued in their African colonies. Calling it “colonialism” allows people to recite abolition dates as though Africans were no longer being forced to work for European for free and had their hands butchered, their rulers beheaded when they refused to. This continued over a century.