No idea why the country that boldly put an end to slavery should pay reparations to anyone. If anything, the rest of the world should pay reparations to Britain for the IR, and ending slavery.
"If anything, the rest of the world should pay reparations to Britain for the IR, and ending slavery."
The British did not end slavery...it still exists in parts of the world today. Nor did Britain end slavery in the United States; the United States ended slavery in the United States.
"Of course not, they ended slavery where they could and set the example for the rest of the world."
A little overstated. Britain is to be honored for its stand against slavery. But while the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was a landmark, it did not end slavery throughout the entire British sphere of influence. The Act explicitly excluded territories like British India, where slavery was addressed separately by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843. In regions colonized later, such as Nigeria, the abolition of pre-existing local systems of slavery was a gradual process that extended into the early 20th century. Furthermore, in British protectorates, which retained their own local laws, the institution persisted for much longer. For example, slavery in Bahrain was not legally abolished until 1937.
The Nigerian tribal chiefs resisted Britain's attempts to abolish slavery within the colony as they were accumulating great wealth from enslaving and selling their rival tribes. Some managed to negotiate special dispensation where the local British colonial official would look the other way.
The tremendous advancements of the British, as well as the rest of Western Civilization, in wealth, health, living conditions, and science and technology are the result of intelligence, inquisitiveness, industriousness, insight, inspiration, imagination, and inventiveness.
The empirical point is solid. Britain’s wealth was not primarily built on slavery, and the historical picture is far more complex than the reparations narrative suggests.
But why does this dry historical question feel so loaded? Because it is made to carry the weight of a different conflict entirely: guilt and power.
Both sides make the same mistake — and often the same dishonest move — of hinging the moral and political question on a particular reading of the historical one. If Britain’s economy had depended more heavily on slavery, would the British then be obliged to pay reparations? And if not, at what threshold do they escape them? The entire framing outsources Britain's moral self-understanding to an econometric reconstruction of the eighteenth century.
The legitimacy of a civilisation, and the obligations it owes to others, cannot be allowed to rise or fall on contingent empirical claims. To tie guilt to a contested version of history is to surrender sovereignty to whoever controls the narrative. What kind of culture would voluntarily impoverish itself to benefit groups openly hostile to it? Only one that has lost its internal sources of legitimacy and seeks absolution from outsiders.
My own view is simpler: even if slavery had contributed far more to Britain’s wealth than it did, reparations should still be dismissed out of hand. History is not a court of justice; it is a theatre of tragedy and power. Other civilisations understand this implicitly, as the West once did. They rely on inherited loyalties and organic attachments as a form of civilisational immunology — anchoring duty and belonging in prejudice without needing to litigate the past. That makes moral blackmail impossible.
Acknowledge the facts of history honestly, and reject guilt and reparations categorically — not because slavery was insignificant, but because legitimacy comes from within, and because on the stage of history, guilt is suicidal.
The case for institutional development as the driver of Britains wealth really stands out when you look at how the financial innovations like double entry bookkeeping and joint stock companies enabled scalability way before any major colonial profits. What strikes me is how the Enlightenment shift toward useful knowlege created this feedback loop between theory and practice that other civilizations couldnt sustain. The contrast with Africas trans-Saharan slave trade lasting centuries without generating institutional growth makes the point even clearer.
I am not offering to write it. Someone should do that with more abilities and knowledge than I. However, I would be very interested in reading a well-written article and seeing the reader's response.
Ingrid Robeyns is a philosopher who champions this.
Well stated. Sowell's discussions on slavery come to mind.
That the very institutions that increased human prosperity & liberated most of humanity from thralldom are under siege speaks volumes about the corrosive nature of modern delusions. Enshrined irrationality is the bloody goddess of strife & she seems to beckon with allure to her strident partisans.
I watch the rampaging crowds with indifference; but then again, I'm in Texas with an armory, surrounded by neighbors that all agree: "molon labe." Because though not a trained biologist, I can define the term "woman" ; & because, though not an effete intellectual, I abide in "Common Sense." (T Paine)
This piece reads like selective economic history packaged to dismiss an entire reparations debate without engaging with the evidence.
You argue that Britain’s wealth was “endogenous” and largely unrelated to slavery, yet you ignore the huge body of research showing how deeply the Atlantic slave economy and the wider empire were entangled with British finance, insurance, shipping, banking and state revenue. The fact that some growth occurred before 1700 doesn’t erase the documented role of slave-derived capital, the massive 1830s bailout of slave-owners, or the reinvestment of those funds into railways, infrastructure and financial institutions that shaped modern Britain.
Calling slavery a “byproduct” of British institutions is a rhetorical manoeuvre, not serious analysis. The marine insurance sector, London credit markets, and West Indian commerce were structurally tied to slavery for centuries. Pretending this was a marginal sideline is just bad history.
The section on Africa is far worse: sweeping generalisations about “superstitious beliefs” and “low test scores” are not institutional analysis; they’re racialised caricatures. You reduce complex histories of African states, pre-colonial commercial systems, the destructive impact of both the Atlantic and colonial trades, and the long-term effects of imperial partition into a simplistic claim that Africa’s underdevelopment is mostly cultural. That’s ideology, not scholarship.
Finally, the argument that Black Britons and Caribbean nations have already received “reparations” simply by living in the West is morally unserious. Relative living standards don’t answer questions about historical harm, compensation (which Britain gave to slave-owners, not the enslaved), or the continuing legacies of empire. Aid programmes and a handful of scholarships are not reparations.
In short: the article cherry-picks data that flatters a predetermined conclusion, downplays well-established historical facts, and ends by implying that Black people should consider Western prosperity their compensation. It’s a seductive narrative for people who want the past to be simple — but it’s neither accurate nor intellectually honest.
England had a financial advantage before acquiring colonies. Finance in England helped to propel slavery and financial institutions implemented innovative strategies to fund the slavery business. Nobel prizing winning economists have also shown that the contribution of the slave trade was indirect. The transatlantic trade stimulated investments in property rights. However institutional exposure does not always stimulate innovation in property rights. Africans have preserved communal property rights and anti-business inheritance protocols despite exposure to the West. Compensating slaveowners expedited the abolition of slavery. Africans wanted compensation too but they did not have a lobby to sponsor them in the UK. England does not owe blacks anything. Being in the UK is reparation for blacks. They benefit from scholarships and other luxuries because they are black. Africa is Indeed superstitious and test scores are low. Africa has the lowest level of human capital.
They don’t need to pay reparations. It’s not going to happen in America anyway. But the Europeans cannot simply deny any involvement or benefit gained from the primitive accumulation taking place in North America that fueled the industrial revolution in Europe.
No idea why the country that boldly put an end to slavery should pay reparations to anyone. If anything, the rest of the world should pay reparations to Britain for the IR, and ending slavery.
"If anything, the rest of the world should pay reparations to Britain for the IR, and ending slavery."
The British did not end slavery...it still exists in parts of the world today. Nor did Britain end slavery in the United States; the United States ended slavery in the United States.
Of course not, they ended slavery where they could and set the example for the rest of the world. The IR hasn’t made it everywhere either. Sheesh!
"Of course not, they ended slavery where they could and set the example for the rest of the world."
A little overstated. Britain is to be honored for its stand against slavery. But while the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was a landmark, it did not end slavery throughout the entire British sphere of influence. The Act explicitly excluded territories like British India, where slavery was addressed separately by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843. In regions colonized later, such as Nigeria, the abolition of pre-existing local systems of slavery was a gradual process that extended into the early 20th century. Furthermore, in British protectorates, which retained their own local laws, the institution persisted for much longer. For example, slavery in Bahrain was not legally abolished until 1937.
The Nigerian tribal chiefs resisted Britain's attempts to abolish slavery within the colony as they were accumulating great wealth from enslaving and selling their rival tribes. Some managed to negotiate special dispensation where the local British colonial official would look the other way.
The tremendous advancements of the British, as well as the rest of Western Civilization, in wealth, health, living conditions, and science and technology are the result of intelligence, inquisitiveness, industriousness, insight, inspiration, imagination, and inventiveness.
The empirical point is solid. Britain’s wealth was not primarily built on slavery, and the historical picture is far more complex than the reparations narrative suggests.
But why does this dry historical question feel so loaded? Because it is made to carry the weight of a different conflict entirely: guilt and power.
Both sides make the same mistake — and often the same dishonest move — of hinging the moral and political question on a particular reading of the historical one. If Britain’s economy had depended more heavily on slavery, would the British then be obliged to pay reparations? And if not, at what threshold do they escape them? The entire framing outsources Britain's moral self-understanding to an econometric reconstruction of the eighteenth century.
The legitimacy of a civilisation, and the obligations it owes to others, cannot be allowed to rise or fall on contingent empirical claims. To tie guilt to a contested version of history is to surrender sovereignty to whoever controls the narrative. What kind of culture would voluntarily impoverish itself to benefit groups openly hostile to it? Only one that has lost its internal sources of legitimacy and seeks absolution from outsiders.
My own view is simpler: even if slavery had contributed far more to Britain’s wealth than it did, reparations should still be dismissed out of hand. History is not a court of justice; it is a theatre of tragedy and power. Other civilisations understand this implicitly, as the West once did. They rely on inherited loyalties and organic attachments as a form of civilisational immunology — anchoring duty and belonging in prejudice without needing to litigate the past. That makes moral blackmail impossible.
Acknowledge the facts of history honestly, and reject guilt and reparations categorically — not because slavery was insignificant, but because legitimacy comes from within, and because on the stage of history, guilt is suicidal.
In any event, the privilege of living in an economically developed Western society is reparation.
Solid piece, thanks.
The case for institutional development as the driver of Britains wealth really stands out when you look at how the financial innovations like double entry bookkeeping and joint stock companies enabled scalability way before any major colonial profits. What strikes me is how the Enlightenment shift toward useful knowlege created this feedback loop between theory and practice that other civilizations couldnt sustain. The contrast with Africas trans-Saharan slave trade lasting centuries without generating institutional growth makes the point even clearer.
Great analysis with data.
Compelling essay, Lipton. Excellent as always.
Aporia, how about a piece on Limitarianism?
We'd be open to that.
—NC
I am not offering to write it. Someone should do that with more abilities and knowledge than I. However, I would be very interested in reading a well-written article and seeing the reader's response.
Ingrid Robeyns is a philosopher who champions this.
To clarify, my primary interest lies in the field of Economic Limitarianism.
Well, some of it was. What is capital after all if not the accumulated crime and sacrifice of centuries, plus interest?
We all deserve our economic energy back. All of us.
Lenny never was very funny. This is his worst joke ever.
Well stated. Sowell's discussions on slavery come to mind.
That the very institutions that increased human prosperity & liberated most of humanity from thralldom are under siege speaks volumes about the corrosive nature of modern delusions. Enshrined irrationality is the bloody goddess of strife & she seems to beckon with allure to her strident partisans.
I watch the rampaging crowds with indifference; but then again, I'm in Texas with an armory, surrounded by neighbors that all agree: "molon labe." Because though not a trained biologist, I can define the term "woman" ; & because, though not an effete intellectual, I abide in "Common Sense." (T Paine)
This piece reads like selective economic history packaged to dismiss an entire reparations debate without engaging with the evidence.
You argue that Britain’s wealth was “endogenous” and largely unrelated to slavery, yet you ignore the huge body of research showing how deeply the Atlantic slave economy and the wider empire were entangled with British finance, insurance, shipping, banking and state revenue. The fact that some growth occurred before 1700 doesn’t erase the documented role of slave-derived capital, the massive 1830s bailout of slave-owners, or the reinvestment of those funds into railways, infrastructure and financial institutions that shaped modern Britain.
Calling slavery a “byproduct” of British institutions is a rhetorical manoeuvre, not serious analysis. The marine insurance sector, London credit markets, and West Indian commerce were structurally tied to slavery for centuries. Pretending this was a marginal sideline is just bad history.
The section on Africa is far worse: sweeping generalisations about “superstitious beliefs” and “low test scores” are not institutional analysis; they’re racialised caricatures. You reduce complex histories of African states, pre-colonial commercial systems, the destructive impact of both the Atlantic and colonial trades, and the long-term effects of imperial partition into a simplistic claim that Africa’s underdevelopment is mostly cultural. That’s ideology, not scholarship.
Finally, the argument that Black Britons and Caribbean nations have already received “reparations” simply by living in the West is morally unserious. Relative living standards don’t answer questions about historical harm, compensation (which Britain gave to slave-owners, not the enslaved), or the continuing legacies of empire. Aid programmes and a handful of scholarships are not reparations.
In short: the article cherry-picks data that flatters a predetermined conclusion, downplays well-established historical facts, and ends by implying that Black people should consider Western prosperity their compensation. It’s a seductive narrative for people who want the past to be simple — but it’s neither accurate nor intellectually honest.
England had a financial advantage before acquiring colonies. Finance in England helped to propel slavery and financial institutions implemented innovative strategies to fund the slavery business. Nobel prizing winning economists have also shown that the contribution of the slave trade was indirect. The transatlantic trade stimulated investments in property rights. However institutional exposure does not always stimulate innovation in property rights. Africans have preserved communal property rights and anti-business inheritance protocols despite exposure to the West. Compensating slaveowners expedited the abolition of slavery. Africans wanted compensation too but they did not have a lobby to sponsor them in the UK. England does not owe blacks anything. Being in the UK is reparation for blacks. They benefit from scholarships and other luxuries because they are black. Africa is Indeed superstitious and test scores are low. Africa has the lowest level of human capital.
Urging all to read Thomas Sowell's and Douglas Murray's thoughts on this matter (The War On The West)
https://www.lotuseaters.com/the-war-on-the-west-how-to-prevail-in-the-age-of-unreason-20-04-2022
They don’t need to pay reparations. It’s not going to happen in America anyway. But the Europeans cannot simply deny any involvement or benefit gained from the primitive accumulation taking place in North America that fueled the industrial revolution in Europe.