Themes of the Atlantic slave trade, systems of slavery and the justness of possible reparations for the descendants of Africans are particularly pertinent this year. After all, for much of the English-speaking world this year marks at least two important anniversaries.

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The first commemoration is the founding of the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Defying great odds, Virginia went on to play such an important role on the British North American colonies and the United States of America. After 12 years the colony was secure enough to call its first general legislative assembly and consolidate its fragile hold on the surrounding areas. The success of Virginia had tremendous consequences for the history of the Caribbean, especially for the English colony of Barbados.

The other commemoration has far greater significance for the English-speaking Caribbean. In 1807 the British Parliament abolished the lucrative and commercially important transatlantic slave trade conducted by its citizens for more than two and a half centuries. During that time more than 10 million Africans were transported to the Americas and condemned to eternal servitude. American slavery not only profoundly transformed the economies of Europe and the Americas, but also the demography, society, ecology and culture of several continents.

The termination of the English slave trade failed to end the horrible commerce. Although the English were the principal slave merchants throughout the Americas, nearly 25 per cent of all Africans arrived in the New World after 1810, with more than 600,000 sold in Cuba alone. While post-1810 American deliveries represented a dramatic decline from the 60 per cent trade conducted between 1700 and 1810, the demand for Africans remained strong through the middle of the 19th century
The abolition of a part of the trade was a modest step. By 1807, the Haitians had totally abolished slavery. That was the most important Caribbean event after 1492.

Elsewhere Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island had abolished slavery within their jurisdictions and New York and New Jersey imposed conditional abolition, meaning that no new slaves could be introduced to their territories. Unfortunately, Haiti and the northern United States were not then important participants in the transatlantic slave trade.

Slavery was the congenital twin of the slave trade and more important in the daily lives of the enslaved. The English tardiness in abolishing their system of slavery clearly shows the self-serving nature of their anti-slave trade action. The English were more interested in national commercial advantage than in the conditions of the enslaved.

Their Caribbean colonies were stagnating economically and falling behind the French and later the Spanish Antilles. Ending the general supply of labour temporarily extended the competitive ability of the British West Indies. By 1828 Cuba produced more sugar than the rest of the Caribbean, and by the 1880s a single Cuban sugar mill produced more sugar than all the British West Indies together.

Scene aboard a slave ship.

Studies of the slave trade and systems of slavery produced some of the most exciting historical scholarship in the past century. As a result, far more is known about who bought and sold whom, and the actual working conditions of Africans taken to the Americas. The Atlantic slave trade was the most massive transfer of peoples anywhere and the largest migration to the Americas before the age of the steamship.

Very few aspects of world history since 1550 can be fully understood without reference to the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. Information now available has virtually revolutionised histories of the modern world not only of Europe, Africa and the Americas but also of Asia, especially of India and China.

The historian, David Eltis, and some colleagues have published a data base of 27,233 slave voyages, mainly after 1700, with extensive information on ship captains, ship owners, tonnage, crew size, departure dates and locations in Africa, and arrival dates and locations in the Americas along with the age and gender of some arriving Africans. That is the good news. The bad news is that the overwhelming majority of Africans who arrived in the New World left no record of names, home villages, or family connections, greatly complicating the problem of compensation.

Systems of slavery in the Americas varied according to time, location, productive activity, and demographic composition. Not all descendants of Africans in the Americas arrived as a result of the slave trade so not all black people in the slave societies resulted from trafficking in humans.

Slave societies are inherently unstable, unjust and contradictory. Slavery everywhere was generally restrictive and harsh and slave life tended to be, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, "nasty, brutish and short". When slavery collapsed, the ex-slave-owners received compensation in some cases but never the slaves.

The question of reparations for the manifest injustices of slavery after 1500 is a legitimate exercise although enormously complex and eventually futile. Slavery was never uniform. Reparations might have to reflect that fact and the differences between selling and using slaves. But that is a totally different issue.

Legitimacy of reparations derives from the ruthlessly exploitative nature of slavery during several centuries as well as modern precedents, especially claims made by the descendants of incarcerated Jews against Germany, and Japanese against the United States. In both cases, the two countries had invidiously selected a group, imprisoned them and confiscated their property. Germany wantonly practised genocide against the Jews.

At the same time, the discussion is futile because justice has no universally accepted definition. Justice and international morality are opportunistically determined by political power relations. Descendants of slaves in Africa or in the global African diaspora lack the political or moral power that Jews and Japanese mobilised to lever a sort of convenient justice that resulted in reparations.

Operations of the World Court or the United Nations indicate the sad reality that the dice is loaded and the case stacked against reparations. Proponents must accept that reality and move on to other urgent issues.

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