Reading Time 2 mins
August 23, 2022
“The emotions, feelings, thoughts of the ‘underclass’ — … are not recounted in books. But their history lives on in the memories of their grandchildren.” Edna Brodber, quoted in David Scott(1).
Designated by UNESCO, today, August 23, is commemorated as The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. It is a day celebrated each year to memorialize the transatlantic slave trade. As part of this acknowledgment, we at BDN pause to appreciate the tenacity and burning desire which existed in all enslaved people for freedom and international morality.
Indeed, enslavement and its dastardly legacy have always animated scholarship. Against this backdrop, we welcome Sir Hilary Beckles’ “How Britain Undeveloped the Caribbean: A Reparation Response to Europe’s Legacy of Plunder and Poverty” as the most inspiring book of this century and as a platform for re-igniting and re-energizing region-wide, and indeed global, discussions of reparatory justice.
Sir Beckles’ text compels attention in all sectors of our Caribbean civilization as it advances and amplifies the call for reparations, the most pressing issue of our times. Hence we launch our Symposium today in recognition of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade as a first step in advancing the Reparations Agenda, especially in hitherto unacknowledged communities.
The epigraph speaks to re-engaging the “epistemic novelty” of Erna Brodber’s groundbreaking work in calling for the inclusion of oral history in academic scholarship, which, as Brodber suggests, has been “overly dependent on book learning”(2). A theme picked up by Carlyle Leach, our first discussant, in “Great Expectations: Going for the Win.” He calls for factoring ordinary people into historical research while welcoming Beckles’s illuminating treatise as “a portal for all to access the truth about Britain’s plunder and its resultant poverty, ” compelling the masses to join the movement.
Secondly, Kamau Odinga’s “In the Tradition of Our Best Truth-Tellers,” underscores the centrality of land in a people’s development and applauds Beckles for presenting the book in “largely non-technical terms to incite discussion and action,” especially in grassroots communities. Third, although Lester Adams wonders in “A Powerful Moral Call to Action” if too much faith is placed in the ameliorative trust of reparations, he nevertheless supports a grassroots movement to exert moral and political pressure.
Margaret Prescod-Cisse’s “Britain on Trial” presents the air-tight evidence articulated in How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean for an inescapable guilty verdict. Pondering the disjuncture between theory and praxis, she asks, “How does the reparations movement transcend from exhaustive research to mass advocacy?”
As reflected in “Grenada, Bank of England and Slavery,” we invite you to join the Symposium by posting your questions and comments and engaging the more specific conversations as we consider a country-specific focus on British plunder in the region. In due course, we also intend to put France and others On Trial.
From BDN Editors
1 David Scott, “Preface: Erna Brodber’s Social Ethics of Black Memory,” Small Axe, no. 68 ((July 2022): vii.
2 Ibid., viii.
What a well-written and incisive piece! The Symposium is highly informative and piqued my interest. Note: I posit that the Europeans have no intention of making reparations. They’d have to accept that what they did was egregious and held far-reaching consequences globally then, now, and in the foreseeable future. Perhaps, they figured their immigration programs were enough. Laughable, as they’ve since reneged on those programs and the people from the lands they plundered are no longer welcome. It is still essential to forging ahead, illuminating the necessity of reparations on the world stage. Indeed it is time for a reckoning, which will require a worldwide effort to truly see restoration and Justice for those affected.