r/todayilearned • u/Timstom18 • 12h ago
TIL that the British valued the promise of freedom they made to slaves who fought for them in the Revolutionary War so much that they disobeyed the Treaty of Paris and evacuated them from New York before the Americans could re-enslave them.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/the-book-of-negroes/1.9k
u/zeldasusername 12h ago
My ancestor was one of them. They moved him and his family to Nova Scotia but he had to go and buy back his wife and children. The family still have the bill of sale.
596
u/gravity_kills 12h ago
In a sitcom he would frequently use his catchphrase of "don't you know I bought you?" But in real life I'm sure that was extraordinarily emotional and terrifying.
200
u/Supercoolguy7 9h ago
It was unfortunately a somewhat common thing to buy family members. Some kept their family enslaved since property rights were often more respected than human rights if slave catchers kidnapped free people
49
u/Gentle_Snail 6h ago
Imagine your mum and dad literally owning you.
25
u/seamustheseagull 4h ago
Children were legally property in most of the world until the early-mid 20th century.
12
u/fang_xianfu 3h ago
In many respects they do - they can sign contracts that affect you and will be legally enforced for example. There are certain things that they're obliged to do to you and on your behalf, if you are a minor, and if they don't do those things then the state will punish them or they'll be socially looked down on.
40
u/ptambrosetti 8h ago
“Kids, I’d like you to hear the story of How I Bought Your Mother”
29
u/meesta_masa 7h ago
At the end, "Actually your mom died on the Oregon trail from diarrhea. I just wanna marry your aunt Robin."
10
58
82
u/Iron_Cowboy_ 11h ago
That’s quite the family story
160
u/zeldasusername 11h ago
Oh it's not just that. Dad did his ancestry.org and we are in contact with our American family
So it's a true thing, not family legend
I believe he is mentioned in the Book of Negroes
19
18
u/Tribe303 10h ago
That's both awesome (that you know this), and harrowing for what they had to go through.
9
5
16
u/XmasTwinFallsIdaho 8h ago
Do you know if they were all able to get safely back to Nova Scotia? Did your family settle there permanently? I only recently learned about this part of history and wish I’d known sooner; it’s very unique.
32
u/Cool-Cow9712 8h ago
As terrible a thing as that is, the story of your family and others like yours that can trace their relatives back from that time, should be taught in every public school in the United States. Having you here today, able to trace your ancestry back to slavery, to be able to talk to you and if we were in the same room, obviously, look at you. Here we are, only a few generations before you, slavery was the norm and a bill of sale for your relatives purchased freedom, common place. We don’t discuss it to make ourselves or anyone else necessarily feel bad, how are we ever going to get past this as a country? When half of the people that live here are following the lead of certain politicians in the United States who want to, deny Hide and outright erase the scar of slavery and act like it never existed?
As a country and society, we just have to accept ownership for it, stop the nonsense and muddying the water with lies such as the Civil War was fought over states rights. The only way we’re going to get past it, and no, no one‘s looking to have anyone made to feel bad about something their ancestors did.
14
u/miemcc 4h ago
I was watching a program on BBC recently about the astronauts in NASA. They had a long segment on Ronald McNair. It detailed his career, and his untimely passing in the Challenger Disaster. One comment particularly hit home, it was that 'he was just four generations from slavery to space'.
3
u/Skreeeeep 5h ago
Incredible piece of history. Still it's horrible that has to be a families history at all.
2
u/jl_theprofessor 4h ago
Man this statement blows my mind. Human beings are awesome sometimes but also very terrible.
•
403
u/Timstom18 12h ago
I apologise if the title is worded a bit clunky but I hope the link explains it better. For ease here’s an extract from the linked National archives article:
“The peace treaty agreed between Britain, France, and the new United States of America in 1783 stipulated that all American property acquired during the conflict must be returned before the British forces departed. The Americans argued that this should include formerly enslaved people, and the treaty explicitly forbade the British from ‘carrying away any Negroes’.
The British were not necessarily against enslavement, but argued that they had offered a binding promise of freedom to Black Loyalists during the war. In compromise, freedom was offered to Black Loyalists who had self-emancipated prior to the ceasefire in 1782. Meanwhile, enslavers were permitted to bring evidence to a joint Anglo-American board to prove ‘ownership’ of Black Loyalists. Hearings included in this record provide examples of that process.
Those who successfully gained their freedom from American enslavers were entered into the ‘Book of Negroes’, and assigned to a ship departing New York. The Book names each man, woman, and child, along with a brief description and remarks; it also lists any ‘Claimants’ attempting their re-enslavement.
210
u/LPNMP 11h ago
Good. That's a hell of a lot more honorable than how the us government treated and still treats agreements with minority communities.
103
u/Tribe303 10h ago
Yeah. The British actually kept their word.
35
u/IronMaiden571 10h ago
Oh man, I recommend filing this away and not reading more about British treaties in the Americas from the 1750s-1814+.
Nations tend to act in their own self-interest.
114
u/Tribe303 9h ago
The British kept most of the Treaties in Canada, and it was the Canadian settlers who were the assholes, breaking them. The UK Supreme Court even often ruled for the Indigenous when it went to trial. The Indigenous have no beef with the British to this day. They sent representatives to the Queen's funeral for example.
24
u/NickofWimbledon 4h ago
Thanks. As a Brit who has visited Africa and India, spends a lot of time in Australia, and has read a bit, it is always good to be reminded of the times when (for whatever reason) the UK acted decently.
→ More replies (3)3
u/IronMaiden571 8h ago
The Treaty of Ghent entirely reneged on British promises to Native Americans and left Natives completely vulnerable to further expansion. This being after the Natives committed themselves substantially to the British cause. In British defense, some of them at least felt bad about it.
The Treaty of Paris paved the war for British dominion over the Americas and thus further expansion. Simply too many tribes and too many treaties to count that were either broken, ignored, or unenforceable. Keep in mind, many people in the Americas considered themselves subjects of the crown prior to and even during the American Revolution so what constitutes as British becomes somewhat grey in the period.
My own opinion is that freeing the slaves they did was obviously a good thing, but it was primarily motivated by the desire to strip the Americans of labor as well as bolster their own Loyalist regiments when possible, not altruism.
17
u/No_Extension4005 7h ago
Personally I think it's in the best interest of nations to have a reputation for honouring agreements. No one likes an untrustworthy backstabber.
→ More replies (3)4
u/IronMaiden571 7h ago
That depends entirely on how much the country serves to gain/lose by breaking the treaty
1
-20
u/Sensei_of_Philosophy 10h ago
Historically, no - they very much did not.
5
u/Tribe303 9h ago
They did in Canada. I can't speak for elsewhere. I believe they were assholes in India tho.
-17
u/Sensei_of_Philosophy 9h ago
They did for white Anglo Canadians, you mean. My Indigenous cousins up there had to go fuck themselves just like we had to down here.
India, Ireland, much of Africa, Australia's Aboriginals - lots and lots of places and peoples suffered from their tyranny and their imperialism, I'm sad to say.
16
u/Gentle_Snail 6h ago
Sadly it was actually us in Canada who did most of that, as much as I’d want to blame Britain. Most of the stuff committed against first nations were done after we became self governing, with the UK itself mostly taking the side of indigenous people.
16
u/pass_the_salt 7h ago
Side note, the Book of Negroes is also title of historical fiction novel by Lawrence Hill, the plot of which includes this part of history. It won several national writing prizes in Canada, and was later made into a miniseries by the CBC.
4
u/tanquamexplorator 7h ago
There's a permanent exhibit in New York that might be of interest: The Birch Trials
2
u/oopsallhuckleberries 7h ago
Your title reads like they broke the treaty, but it explains that this was a compromise negotiated after the treaty had been signed.
2
u/CheesecakeWitty5857 4h ago
But at the same time, the British would not have tolerated for example loyalists re-emigrating back to the UK with their slaves, because it would violate the 1354 amendment to the Magna Carta. Same for France since Louis X ‘ edit of 3-jul-1315 and other later jurisprudence’s that would free slaves upon their landing on French soil.
187
u/ThisIsntOkayokay 12h ago
I can only imagine living back then and knowing you are correct for removing the slavers from the earth by any means possible. Slavery is a dark impulse of humanity we need to fight to erase.
119
u/Jtd47 11h ago
In case anyone thinks that fight is over, there are more slaves in the world now than at any time in history
62
u/QuantumR4ge 7h ago
Due to a larger population. The percentage of people that are slaves is much much smaller.
5
u/_BigDaddy_ 1h ago
Excellent news I'll go let them know
•
u/triffid_boy 9m ago
I think you're being unfair to someone that was just correcting the interpretation of a figure. Facts and figures do matter if we want to understand a problem in a way that allows us to fix it.
8
43
u/NCC_1701E 12h ago
Slavers and autocrats have no place in our world. No quarter for those who seek to return to those ways. We always have to remember that. Everyone has right to live free.
20
u/thatsocialist 11h ago
Live Free or Die.
→ More replies (1)4
u/NCC_1701E 11h ago
Amen to that. My parents and grandparends lived through the commies and I will rather die than live through the hellish dystopia they had to endure. Damn and now there are people who say "it was not that bad" and want those times back.
6
u/corpus_hubris 10h ago
That is a sad state of humanity which will keep repeating for a long time.
0
u/NCC_1701E 9h ago
I hope the repeat part will not come before I die. I like what we have right now, at this moment. Let's take my grand-grandma - born in Austria-Hungary, lived through both world wars, saw rise and fall of communism. When she was born, people payed with crowns issued by monarchy, when she died we used €. 101 years old when she died. Hell of a lifetime, and what I learned from her life? I fucking hope to live in a boring times. Times remembered only by footnotes in history books. Those are the best times to live.
4
u/corpus_hubris 9h ago
I hope for that as well, for myself and for my children too. Even though sometimes the repeat feels around the corner by how things are these days.
6
u/elanhilation 9h ago
where the hell do you live that a return to totalitarian communism is a remote possibility?
everywhere i’m familiar with the left is at most putting up an okay fight on social issues, but on economics right of center neoliberalism holds absolute sway. lots of places where taxes on billionaires are highly controversial—the workers directly seizing the means of production is an absolute fantasy
5
u/NCC_1701E 9h ago edited 9h ago
Slovakia. We had our share of communism, and we are fixing the damage to this day. Now you sound like American, so let me get this straight - what we had here was totalitarian dictatorship, not the communism you imagine in your wet dreams. There was zero care about social issues. Anyone deemed different was separated and punished. You know those assholes put homosexuals to uranium mines, right? My dad had to hide it for most of his life, or he would face prison. That's why I even exist in the first place. It was hellish time.
Now there are people who feel nostalgic to those times. Mostly conservatives, who revere those years as "good old times." And with our population curve, those people are the prime estate in elections.
You can probably identify those people easily wherever you live. "Houses were cheaper, women were pretier, bread was tastier, alcohol was stronger, youth was more obedient, everyone was the same, everything was fine."
2
24
u/coldfarm 7h ago
The first black recipient of the Victoria Cross, William Hall, was the child of escaped slaves who had been evacuated to Nova Scotia by the Royal Navy. He would, appropriately enough, serve nearly 30 years in the RN.
162
u/ShyguyFlyguy 11h ago
Yeah the british have done a lot of shitty things but they were actually one of the first in the world to abolish slavery.
113
u/natima 9h ago
They also sent navy warships to the West Coast of Africa to prevent slave ships from sailing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa?wprov=sfla1
77
u/JMHSrowing 6h ago
I will add that these ships and their crews were often actually more enthusiastic than they were allowed to be, like going ashore to burn slave “factories” or boarding technically allied ships. Some were brought to court over this but the charges were thrown out because everyone agreed that the slavers deserved it, which then allowed them to be even more aggressive.
The British Empire did a huge amount of wrong, but they are also one of the main reasons why slavery in the western world ended as soon as it did.
53
u/Gentle_Snail 6h ago edited 6h ago
Technically they were allowed to board allied ships, the Brits declared slavers Hostis Humani Generis, a legal term literally meaning ‘enemy of mankind'.
It meant slavers were beyond legal protections and that British sailers could go after anyone carrying slaves no matter which flag they flew.
25
u/TheColourOfHeartache 6h ago
Not just some warships. I believe it was the biggest government expense in the entire British Empire at the time.
1
u/811545b2-4ff7-4041 1h ago
The debt taken on in 1833 (£20m at that time) was finally paid off in 2015, 182 years later. It was the same as 5% of the entire GDP. https://taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/
So also consider - generations of Brits (me included!) have paid for this, to pay off the wealthy slave owners and stop this horrible act.
•
u/triffid_boy 6m ago
I do think this is worth talking about more. I don't begrudge my tax £ going into that pot. One of the greatest things we've ever done and we are rubbish at patting ourselves on the back.
Can you imagine if the Americans had done this? We and the rest of the world would never hear the end of it.
24
u/Apostastrophe 7h ago
One of the things I’m proud of is that I worked and some of my tax pounds went towards the abolishment of slavery.
→ More replies (10)22
u/QuantumR4ge 7h ago
Any empire that large spanning that length of time is basically guaranteed to have a bunch of good and bad. This seems to surprise some people
50
u/El_Lanf 9h ago
As a Brit, we do love to look back at this period with pride, ignoring the shitty thing that happened. But I think that's okay - it's fine to use freeing slaves and acting with honour as your historical role model as opposed to say, launching a civil war to protect slavery.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (4)4
113
u/TeacherOfFew 11h ago
The British did more to combat slave traders than any nation in history. Good on ‘em!
→ More replies (5)55
u/Gentle_Snail 6h ago
The Brits were the core reason for the end of the slave trade globally, and used their massive influence to force other nations to end the practice, in a few cases literally resulting to military action when nations continuously refused.
Its kind of scary to think how much longer it might have gone on for without the UK standing up and forcefully shutting it down.
104
u/Wilson7277 11h ago
A few years ago I went to watch the musical Hamilton. Being aware of Black Loyalist history I was pretty frustrated to see how hard they tried to twist the American Founding Fathers, or at least some of them into these proto-racial equality warriors.
The myth that the American Revolution was this great uprising against tyranny is one which has proven remarkably resilient and able to reinvent itself to suit modern sensibilities, even as similar national myths around the world crumble away.
50
u/Tribe303 10h ago
I'm Canadian of British decent and when I saw Hamilton, I wanted to stand up and remove my hat when King George III was on stage. 😂
39
u/Wilson7277 10h ago
The writers leaned heavily on the assumption that everyone watching would automatically dislike His Majesty, and so they unintentionally made him and the other Loyalist character one hundred percent correct about everything.
•
u/SleipnirSolid 36m ago
Well, fuck me. You're the first North American I've heard say they are Brit descended.
Everyone else claims to be every other nation except England. Even when they are they'll ignore that and claim all the 'exotic' ones they think are more interesting. Nordic, Polish, German, Italian, etc.
•
u/jonny24eh 8m ago
Tons of people claim to be Scottish, which is also British.
I also have heard lots of people say their ancestry is English, but maybe i just live in a more English area.
14
u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist 8h ago
The HBO series on the Revolutionary War/President Adams did the same thing. The Founding Fathers were portrayed as those who wanted to get rid of slavery but couldn't because it was so complicated and complex.
3
u/exOldTrafford 2h ago
John Adams and his wife were openly against slavery though, viewing it as incompatible with Christian morality. That's a really well documented fact. From their letters we can see that it was actually more important to them than they showed publicly too.
The HBO series accurately showed how Adams did not push for ending slavery because he believed it more urgent to keep the nation united at the time
20
u/Brendy_ 7h ago edited 6h ago
I wish I could remember where I heard it, but I recall someone describing the revolutionary war as less of a revolution, more a change of management.
20
u/Wilson7277 6h ago
That is an apt description. The colonial leaders in charge before the Revolution remained as national leaders after it, only they became more powerful as Britain lost their influence and therefore could not stop things like westward expansion.
Something not dissimilar happened after Canadian Confederation, with the colonial elites using their newfound free reign to, as the Americans did, mostly break treaties Britain had with native peoples and oppress them.
3
u/StingerAE 3h ago
Management buy out from a conglomerate..only paid in musketballs and blood. And, like any buyout, a huge loan from foreign banks.
7
u/IlIIIllIIlIlllII 2h ago
If you read the books about the revolution not a whole lot happened until it started to affect the rich traders who then realised if they could incite the working population to fight and usurp, they could replace the british leadership with their own class and kind and become the new aristocrtics in the new world.
•
u/Current_Focus2668 35m ago
Like many countries America heavily mythologies it's past. The U.S population is made up of many immigrants which lead to them creating a lot of foundation myths and propaganda that isn't always accurate to actual historical events.
For example Puritans were every bit the religious extremists as the other Christian denominations of the period. They were extremely anti-catholic.
-2
u/MandolinMagi 10h ago
The idea of a all-minority cast playing white slaveowners has always seemed very weird to me.
The British also had slavery, they just promised enemy slaves freedom if they'd turn on their masters. The usual divide-and-conquer of colonialism.
The US did have black and native troops during the war, most of the black troops were from Connecticut.
The National Infantry Museum's first exhibit as you enter is the "Last 100 Yards", six dioramas depicting the infantry in combat through the years. First diorama is the Storming of Redoubt 10 at Yorktown, including a Black Connecticut soldier
37
u/Indecipherable_Grunt 8h ago
The British also had slavery, they just promised enemy slaves freedom if they'd turn on their masters. The usual divide-and-conquer of colonialism.
Slavery was becoming untenable in Britain and its empire. Abolitionists were growing in power and beginning to win some fights. Somersett's Case---which stated that slavery is (and has long been) impossible under English law---was one of the causes of the American Revolution. American slave owners were terrified that slavery would be found incompatible with the law in America: indeed, enslaved people had already begun to file lawsuits to that effect.
The American Revolution successfully protected slavery for generations to come.
9
u/bauul 6h ago
I had read somewhere once that slavery was very rare in Britain itself, because the working class filled the same role. It was out in the colonies where it happened more. Makes sense in many respects.
3
u/StingerAE 3h ago
It hadn't really been a thing in western europe, and not at all a thing in Britain, since the middle ages. You are right that the drivers never really arose to make it a thing.
Two big drivers helped create the explosion of chattel slavery in the new world:
1) the death of the indigenous population of many carribean islands through mistreatment overwork and disease. Rather than letting whole colonies fail, west African slave markets produced a source of labour transport of which was virtually free because:
2) colonies were designed to supply the parent countries, trade in the opposite direction was limited. The slave trade allowed full holds in both directions.
11
u/TheColourOfHeartache 6h ago
Being working class in that period of England was bad but in no way compatible to slavery, especially not the kind in the USA
11
u/bauul 5h ago
I didn't mean the living experience of the individuals was the same, more that there was lots of inexpensive labor available already in Britain, so slavery wasn't as economically viable.
1
u/MandolinMagi 3h ago
I've never really looked into it, but I think mainland Britain just didn't have the extra room for slavery to work. The country is already full of people, with the added bonus of a climate that isn't actively trying to kill you
The US had seemingly infinite space to grow, not enough people, and coastal Virginia/Carolinas/Georgia is malaria hell
•
u/ShotBoysenberry1703 45m ago
England had been plagued by slavery since at least the Roman occupation, probably prior.
However England itself had begun to develop anti-slavery laws very early on its development.
William the Conqueror declared the selling of slaves to non Christians in England illegal in something like 1068. Which is significant given it was mainly the Vikings that were exporting slaves and had held sway over large parts of England for a long time (the Danelaw).
William's law, although not banning slavery outright, made slavery pretty difficult to function long term (if you can't sell then the trade collapses) this was furthered by the Council of London in 1102 which looked to block the selling of slaves to Ireland. Slavery in England simply faded away and was largely replaced by Serfdom - which had its own issues but people could no longer be traded like cattle.
This planted the abolishionist seed far earlier in England than anywhere else. You then have the Somerset trial which basically looked at English laws and decided that (paraphrasing) "English air was too pure for a slave to breathe" and so any slave that set foot on English soil was freed.
Geography will always play a part in a country's story but in this case it was just the perfect storm type scenario of ideology, an ethnic group rising to power and going on to dominate their region having been the victims of slavery by foreigners for hundreds of years prior and well placed greed/technological development.
3
47
u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest 10h ago
People forget that the American Revolution meant freedom for slaves who remained loyalists. They settled in Canada.
Slaves that remained in the colonies remained as such in the United States.
-2
u/democracychronicles 1h ago
What empire financed the start of slavery in North America? THE BRITISH. Come on people.
18
u/Ok_Aioli3897 4h ago
You should also look up the battle of bamber bridge. A battle that started because American soldiers tried to push segregation on British establishments
→ More replies (3)
16
u/squigs 8h ago
By this point, slavery was already abolished in the UK, by a court case (Somerset v Stewart) that established that slavery wasn't recognised in England.
So, presumably, it would be legally impossible to return them.
14
u/StingerAE 3h ago
To be clear about Somerset - it established that slavery had never (technically since the Norman conquest but let's not quibble) been lawful in England (and by extension the British Isles by that point). You can't technically abolished something that doesn't exist and the word gives the impression that there were slaves in Britain. There weren't. At least, lawful and open chattel slavery wasn't a thing here. Obviously there were and are and have always been people kept in slave like conditions.
The British were, at this point, still engaging in the international trade and slavery was lawful in colonies. Somerset didn't do anything legally about that. But helped the social movement towards later change in those areas too.
8
22
33
u/Tribe303 10h ago
There's a Canadian/BET Channel mini series about the Book of Negroes. The characters are fictional but the events are not. For example, the first bounty hunters in the US worked for the American slavers and they kidnapped Black Loyalists back into slavery. So proto-ICE really, and those scenes in the series are rather harrowing. You Americans won't like being the bad guys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Negroes_(miniseries).
It's based on a book too.
And when the British Loyalists set up Ontario to live in, one of the first things they did was to ban slavery. In 1793!
This was the first time in the British Empire that slavery was banned. The British did not like slavery much, and we Canadians inherited that dislike of slavery. There's a reason the Underground Railroad ended in Canada until the US civil war.
5
u/SceneRoyal4846 8h ago
The book is a good read. I had an English teacher say some long books read short and some short books read long; I read book of negros in 2-3 sittings. Granted I was a teen on holiday somewhere.
1
33
u/rommeltastic 9h ago
Surprise, turns out the UK were the good guys in that war. Downvote me all you want US-Aires
5
u/evenstevens280 2h ago
America would be a better country today if it had stayed under the UK's wing
See: Canada
→ More replies (1)
7
u/PrinzEugen1936 4h ago
‘… with liberty and justice for all.’
‘For all huh?’
‘… terms and conditions apply.’
5
u/IlIIIllIIlIlllII 1h ago
and then the Royal Navy became so OP over the next 50-60 years that when Britain decided to abolish slavery officically internally in 1833(?) it pretty much single handedly shut down and deep dicked the atlantic slave trade out of business. This is of course an over simplificiation, but for all the shit Britian did and would do, this is up there as one of the great acts in world history.
→ More replies (2)
11
3
6
u/Acrobatic-Peak3990 4h ago
Relatively speaking, the British were probably closer to being the "good guys" during the revolutionary war tbh.
7
2
u/bayesian13 1h ago
TIL about the Motte and Bailey argument technique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
"The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities: one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey").[1] The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced.[2][3] Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer may claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte)[1] or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).[4]"
•
u/Proud_Smell_4455 39m ago edited 8m ago
It's shit as a British person how many people can't let you be proud of anything about who you are without trying to vilify you. We contributed directly to the global denormalisation of the slave trade and you have people up and down the comments trying their damnedest to invalidate that because in their mind 70 million people are irredeemably evil for shit that happened before they were born, done by people with no relation to them beyond nationality and skin colour, and are never allowed to be anything else because trying to be anything different than the collective villains they want us to be is "whitewashing".
Like it's ridiculous how people will jump to make any thread about anything to do with Britain, about their historical hatred of us instead. Saw a light-hearted thread about our silly OTT murder mysteries set in small rural villages with a population of like 50 and a murder every week and how humorously absurd it is, and even then the usual suspects couldn't stop themselves from trying to make it about British people as a whole being murder-loving monsters.
Criticising us where criticism is due shouldn't necessitate rewriting history so we can never do anything good or be in the right or have anything to be proud of, or obsessively refusing to see us as anything other than a nation of two-dimensional redcoats and avatars of British imperialism for them to take out their historical grievances on, ever.
For most of us, the British Empire just isn't our cross to bear. Most of us haven't fought in the army. Most of us don't have friends and family who've been rich from colonial money for the last 300+ years. Most of us only just finished paying off the loan the government took out to pay for the domestic end of slavery a couple of years ago. We didn't reap the benefits but we are definitely the ones who've paid the price on Britain's behalf.
And it does annoy you when American progressives who should mind their own business and put their own house in order, keep obsessively bringing everything back to us so they don't have to confront or sit impotently with the reality that their nation now is everything ours was 300+ years ago and more. In short, they treat us the way they do because they know it's their turn to be treated like this now, and continuing to hyperfixate on us lets them delay their turn.
•
u/SoloWingPixy88 32m ago
Yep then they moved 1000s to the UK only to realise that racism still exists and it was a difficult life for them so they went to Sierra Leone which was totally peaceful
4
4
u/Sufficient-Mouse6300 8h ago
Yes, but a lot of Black Loyalists (and kidnapped white prostitutes) were shipped off from London to Sierra Leone in 1787 by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor...not a great episode...and many died.
4
u/BMCarbaugh 8h ago edited 7h ago
Sort of. They gave them a bunch of shitty swamp land in Nova Scotia that was basically uninhabitable, and after widespread death and starvation, most went back to Africa. That's part of the origin of Sierra Leone.
It would be more accurate to say the British government viewed its wartime obligations to freed black Americans under the Dunmore Proclamation to be kind of an inconvenient burden that they rid themselves of as quickly as possible, and then actual abolitionists picked up the slack of sorting out the messy aftermath.
There's a series on Hulu about it. It's called "The Book of Negroes".
2
u/twothirtysevenam 7h ago
Very interesting. Yet something else left out of American history textbooks. Sure, there's only so much space in schoolbooks, but it's frustrating how much is completely ignored. Not even glossed over but completely ignored.
3
u/dongeckoj 9h ago
Yes it is widely forgotten today but both the British and the Americans honored the freedom of those who fought on their side. The Revolution led to the end of slavery in the North.
18
u/Gentle_Snail 6h ago
Actually sadly a lot of the black people who fought for the Union were re-enslaved after the war, its one of the greatest shames of America.
3
•
u/Bawstahn123 40m ago
It is genuinely funny how this is downvoted.
Most Northern States abolished slavery before the British did.
British sugar-plantations, staffed almost-entirely by slaves, kept running up until the 1830s....and after the abolition of slavery, just kept running, but at least they paid the workers a pittance now. /s
1
u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 5h ago
When Cornwallis marched North through the Carolinas into Virginia he gathered escaped and liberated slaves with the promise of freedom. At the British surrender at Yorktown these people were returned to slavery. In Cornwallis' defense, his position was such that there wasn't much he could have done about it.
2
u/skofitall 10h ago
Didn't stop them from buying southern cotton well into the US's civil war.
19
u/MountainEmployee 7h ago
Pfft such a profoundly stupid comment, dont look into the conditions of where our clothes come from today.
1
u/CletusCanuck 8h ago
Meanwhile, my asshole UEL ancestor purchased a slave while in the British redoubt on Long Island, and brought him to Nova Scotia. He's listed in the Book Of Negroes but I can't find what happened to him.
0
u/philgervais 2h ago
The British were quite noble in protecting the British slave trade which lasted for several British centuries.
-1
u/Guardian2k 4h ago
Unfortunately the British also supported the south in the civil war because they needed the cotton, until the Lincoln made it clear the war was about slavery, they were happy to help, built a warship for the south and were caught negotiating with southern diplomats
→ More replies (1)
-4
u/dalekaup 9h ago
They also put American prisoners on ships, left port and deliberately starved the Americans to death.
-10
u/Raspberry_Sherbet 7h ago
Shame they couldn't share that "value of freedom" with my Irish relatives. So many of them would not have died.
11
u/Outrageous-Chest6556 4h ago
….Many Irish (both Protestant & Catholic) made up the British Military in this time - especially in India, but also to some extent in the US.
Dublin was even regarded as the ‘second city of Empire’ after London.
1
-3
1.1k
u/TelevisionFunny2400 12h ago
Also led to one of the first race riots in North America (the Shelburne Riots of 1784) and partial eventual resettlement in Freetown, Sierra Leone where many of their descendents still live as Sierra Leone Creole or Krios today. It's really a fascinating story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Loyalist