On August 1, 1834, England, the world's biggest slave trader, ended 250 years of a "national crime" against Africans, but slaveholders and slave traders were paid millions of British pounds in reparations for the loss of their property, as slaves were considered.
The British government paid the slaveholders and others who benefited from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade £20 million or about $200 billion in today's currency, according to the book "Britain's Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide," by Sir Hilary McD. Beckles, chair of social and economic history at the University of the West Indies in Cave Hill, Barbados. Formerly enslaved Africans received nothing.
Supporters and beneficiaries of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade included members of the royal family, most members of Parliament, and the Anglican Church, which owned slaves and plantations in the Caribbean.
Banks, including Barclays PLC, Lloyds Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland Group, also benefited financially from the enslavement of Africans. Slavery provided the funds for England to become the world's first industrial power.
From 1701 to 1800, England shipped 2,532,300 Africans to Caribbean colonies and North American colonies, according to "The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis," Journal of African History 22, no. 4 (1982): 483. The Portuguese shipped 1,796,300 Africans, followed by the French who shipped 1,180,300.
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