Talk – British Slave Owners and the Making of Modern Everyday Finance

Talk – British Slave Owners and the Making of Modern Everyday Finance

David Olusoga’s two-part documentary Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners (BBC2) chronicled the money that was paid to the slave owners to compensate them for the loss of their human property when slavery was finally officially abolished in 1834.

A 10-man committee divided up nearly £17bn in today’s money among 46,000 claimants stretching across the entire British empire, from £800 or so to a country vicar for his single servant to £80m for John Gladstone’s (father of prime minister William) loss of thousands of unpaid workers on his plantations in Guyana.

Not a penny, of course, was paid to the slaves themselves. David’s account further traced the effect of this flow of money to the recapitalization of the City of London as the capital of global finance and making of everyday finance.