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Unread 03-13-2021, 05:56 PM
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Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by David Anthony View Post
How do you think of the British Empire's approach to slavery?
I assume you’re referring to the 1833 Emancipation Act (after more or less two centuries of actively building an empire on slave labor, especially in the Caribbean). Well, it’s good that it happened, but between the massive compensation to former slaveowners, unpaid “apprenticeships” to, well, “learn” the jobs they had done under slavery, deliberately and gratuitously regressive taxes to prevent social mobility (see the Salt Tax in India for another example), use of indentureship to flood the Caribbean labor market and deliberately create an ethnic division in the work force where none had existed before, not to mention property qualifications designed to keep the bulk of former slaves and their descendants out of politics, it’s clear whose side the British government was on.
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