Description
Book SynopsisA concise, reasoned, practical case for why Britain should pay reparations for historic wrongs to present Caribbean inhabitants.Britain owes reparations to the Caribbean. The exploitation of generations of those trafficked from Africa, or born into enslavement, to work the immensely profitable sugars plantations, enriched both British individuals and the British nation. Colonialism, even after emancipation, perpetuated the exploitation. The Caribbean still suffers, and Britain still benefits, from these historic wrongs.There are some fairly standard objections to reparations -- ''slavery ended a long time ago''; ''Britain should be celebrating its role in abolishing slavery''; ''slavery was legal back then and we shouldn''t judge the past by the standards of the present''; ''you shouldn''t visit the sins of the fathers on the sons''; and so on. And there is a sense that the practical problems of who should pay what to whom are immensely difficult.Michael Banner carefully considers and
